IPv6 and XrootD 4

Xrootd version 4 has recently been released. As QMUL is involved in IPv6 testing, and as this new release now supports IPv6, I thought I ought to test it.  So,  what does this involve?

1. Set up a dual stack virtual machine - our deployment system now makes this relatively easy. 
2. Install xrootd. QMUL is a StoRM/Lustre site, and has an existing xrootd server that is part of Atlas's  FAX (Federated ATLAS storage systems using XRootD), so it's just a matter of configuring a new machine to export our posix storage in much the same way.  In fact, I've done it slightly differently as I'm also testing ARGUS authentication, but that's something for another blog post. 
3. Test it - the difficult bit...

I decided to test it using CERN's dual stack lxplus machine: lxplus-ipv6.cern.ch.

First, I tested that I'd got FAX set up correctly:

setupATLAS
localSetupFAX
voms-proxy-init --voms atlas
testFAX

All 3 tests were successful, so I've got FAX working, next configure it to use my test machine:

export STORAGEPREFIX=root://xrootd02.esc.qmul.ac.uk:1094/
testFAX

Which also gave 3 successful tests out of 3. Finally, to prove that downloading files works, and that it isn't just redirection that works, I tested a file that should only be at QMUL:

xrdcp -d 1 root://xrootd02.esc.qmul.ac.uk:1094//atlas/rucio/user/ivukotic:user.ivukotic.xrootd.uki-lt2-qmul-1M -> /dev/null 

All of these reported that they were successful. Were they using IPv6 though? Well looking at Xrootd's logs, it certainly thinks so - at least for some connections, though some still seem to be using IPv4:

140723 16:03:47 18291 XrootdXeq: cwalker.19073:26@lxplus0063.cern.ch pub IPv6 login as atlas027
140723 16:04:01 18271 XrootdXeq: cwalker.20147:27@lxplus0063.cern.ch pub IPv4 login as atlas027
140723 16:04:29 23892 XrootdXeq: cwalker.20189:26@lxplus0063.cern.ch pub IPv6 login as atlas027

Progress!!!

What I did in my CERN vacation

"On the first day of my CERN vacation, I arrived." ...Er.
In approximate order of usefulness, this is what I managed to get done at the 2.5 day workshop last week (I'll insert more stuff as I remember...) Other people should report on the non-storage.

1. Thanks to the ever-helpful EGEE project office, got my paperwork renewed. Hooray!
   
2. Working with Jan to deploy the CIP (CASTOR Information Provider) at CERN. Hooray!
   
3. Catching up with the rest of the CASTOR team and getting lots of CASTOR related notes. There's a lot of new stuff in 2.1.8 (which can be deployed without GSIRFIO), and some strategic planning. xrootd is considered important strategically. Lots of other proposed developments. There is even a suggestion to investigate using Lustre for CASTOR. And how to best provide POSIX access?
   
4. Kickstarting some work with DPM and dCache people. Even interoperation work is not completed and there are lots of little things to follow up on. For example, many SEs support xrootd but not necessarily interoperatingly. SE support for checksumming has improved a lot recently so is becoming increasingly promising.
   
5. General GridPP-storage related stuff: priorities, experiment planning, site recovery from downtime.
   
6. Catching up with Steven Newhouse over dinner Friday, talking about among other things standardisation work in EGEE (SRM, GLUE, etc), and EGI.
   
7. Learning about the experiments storage experiences at the workshop. I heard both "it is too complex" and "we should make use of richer functionality". Made notes we should discuss in the storage meetings. Middleware plans are particularly important when there is no rollback out of an upgrade.
   
8. Installed Capacity discussions. This should have been higher up this list as it was my primary reason for being there(!) but we only covered about 5% of what we ought to have covered. Still, 5% is better than 0%, and it was enough to solve 1 of my 7-8 remaining open use cases because dCache does something similar but complicatedlier. More on this later.
   
9. FTS monitoring. Talked to Ricardo da Rocha who wants to do visualisation of FTS transfers. Well, whaddayaknow, we (GridPP) have already done this: Gidon built a version for me for the EGEE user forum in 2007 in Manchester, based on his work with the RTM. It uses RGMA monitored transfers, sped up x100 to make it look more interesting. Gidon gave me the source before he left. Unless someone from GridPP wishes to volunteer, I'll hand it over to Ricardo along with a suggestion to keep the "GridPP" sticker and give credit to Gidon.
   
10. I am coordinating some additional work on SRM and SRB interoperation (beyond what we've achieved previously, I hope). I discussed my requirements for FTS with Paolo, Àkos, Gavin, et al. Simon Lin was there from ASGC so I got an update on Fu-Min's SRM-to-SRB layer.
    
11. I've started using ROOT for some of the testing at RAL (obviously for rootd testing for LHCb) - some new features in PROOF may come in handy if we're to extend this.
    

That's from a first pass through my notes. Hey ho.