[CI] [Announce] Linux kernel Cluster Framework 0.2

[Aneesh Kumar]

This is the 0.2 release of Linux kernel Cluster Framework.

What is LKCF:
-----------
LKCF's aim is to provide a transport independent cluster communication
framework within the kernel. This enables the developers to write
kernel based cluster services without being worried about
communication transport. It also support RPC style programming. That
means to write kernel service one need to write the service definition
file (<service>.svc>) and the implementation API. LKCF framework will
generate all the registration routines and the marshaling code. Also
it takes care of forwarding the SIGNALs across different nodes.The
particular service can be called from any node specifying the node at
which this particular service need to be executed. All the underlying
management interface is taken care by the LKCF.

What transport are supported as of today:
---------------------------------------
IPV4
Infiniband verbs/RDMA.

Project Documentation:
---------------------
http://ci-linux.sourceforge.net/

Project git repository:
---------------------------
http://git.openssi.org/~kvaneesh/gitweb.cgi?p=ci-to-linus.git;a=summary

The patches can be found at
http://git.openssi.org/~kvaneesh/ics_patches/lkcf-0.2/

and include

0001-Internode-communication-subsystem-for-Linux.txt
0002-ICS-over-Infiniband-verbs-work-in-progress.txt
0003-Token-facility-needed-for-cluster-based-synchronization.txt
0004-A-simple-test-case-for-ICS.txt

The important changes with the release is the support of infiniband
interconnect. The changes are originally from stan smith with further
cleanup and fixes from me.

The patches are on top of git SHA1
ef7d1b244fa6c94fb76d5f787b8629df64ea4046 of the linus tree.


-aneesh

[Smith, Stan]

This juncture seems like a reasonable time to start a discussion of
heterogeneous ICS networks beneath the transport independent LCF.

What are your intentions towards supporting heterogeneous ICS networks?

ICS message routing & forwarding?

Thoughts on the subjects?

[Aneesh Kumar]

Post by Smith, Stan
This juncture seems like a reasonable time to start a discussion of
heterogeneous ICS networks beneath the transport independent LCF.
What are your intentions towards supporting heterogeneous ICS networks?
ICS message routing & forwarding?
Thoughts on the subjects?

Linux kernel currently lacks a framework which one can use to write
cluster services. The idea of cleaning up CI is to make sure that we
can use CI as a framework. For that i removed the CLMS from the kernel
and introduced configfs based configuration. The first release which
was released as CI 0.1 contain the result of that work. This confused
with previous releases of CI. So i decided to rename CI to LKCF. The
name cluster framwork should get some interest in the code too. The
purpose of 0.2 release of LKCF was to share your work of using
infiniband as the interconnect. That goes with the idea of release
early . My idea with LKCF is to take CFS and clusterwide shared memory
to the generic kernel.

-aneesh

[Aneesh Kumar]

Post by Aneesh Kumar
This is the 0.2 release of Linux kernel Cluster Framework.
-----------
LKCF's aim is to provide a transport independent cluster communication
framework within the kernel. This enables the developers to write
kernel based cluster services without being worried about
communication transport. It also support RPC style programming. That
means to write kernel service one need to write the service definition
file (<service>.svc>) and the implementation API. LKCF framework will
generate all the registration routines and the marshaling code. Also
it takes care of forwarding the SIGNALs across different nodes.The
particular service can be called from any node specifying the node at
which this particular service need to be executed. All the underlying
management interface is taken care by the LKCF.

Attaching the short log below

commit 5cfb96a487d1ca1893c30ca112706a315c492197
Author: Aneesh Kumar K.V <***@gmail.com>

A simple test case for ICS.

commit 8ebdda8eca87867b1b6123ab08e1e270f419c74a
Author: Aneesh Kumar K.V <***@gmail.com>

Token facility needed for cluster based synchronization

commit c7214483043dbc1fce194d0ead4be7d30d587dcf
Author: Stan Smith <***@intel.com>

ICS over Infiniband verbs work-in-progress.

commit b35812c68c33357335d9acd44ce702f27c87bbc3
Author: Aneesh Kumar K.V <***@gmail.com>

Internode communication subsystem for Linux.

-aneesh