Network Presence Blog

Redhat’s GPFS distributed file system is used in many HPC environments and is now known as IBM Storage Scale. It is not open-source software and can be downloaded from IBM’s sites. There is a Developer version which can be downloaded for trial use upon registering with IBM.

Here’s how to install the developers release version of IBM Storage Scale on an Alma Linux 9.6 operating system environment as of September 2025.

From a standard minimal install of Alma Linux version 9.6 (say from its ISO or an image template), which matches the newest currently supported kernel and software releases of IBM Storage Scale, see https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/storage-scale?topic=STXKQY/gpfsclustersfaq.html#fsi

Run the following commands to ensure you’re on the latest currently known working kernel version for GPFS/IBM Storage Scale, which at this date is
5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6 in RHEL 9.6 or Alma Linux 9.6

dnf -y  update

dnf -y install kernel-devel-5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6 kernel-5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6 bzip2 gcc gcc-c++ make kernel-headers-5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6 kernel-devel-5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6 tar unzip zip

grubby --set-default /boot/vmlinuz-5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6.x86_64

reboot

Once rebooted on this particularly kernel version with the build environment ready, you can run the “install” file supplied by IBM as the root user.
At the end of the installer’s run, part of it’s output will list:

To install a cluster manually: Use the GPFS packages located within /usr/lpp/mmfs/5.2.3.3/gpfs_rpms/

To do this, cd to the relevant directory for your RPM version Linux and run the dnf install command for the following list of package names:

cd /usr/lpp/mmfs/5.2.3.3/gpfs_rpms/

dnf -y install gpfs.base.rpm gpfs.gpl.rpm gpfs.license.dev.rpm gpfs.gskit.rpm gpfs.docs.rpm gpfs.msg.rpm gpfs.adv.rpm gpfs.crypto.rpm gpfs.docs.rpm gpfs.msg.rpm gpfs.adv.rpm gpfs.crypto.rpm

Now you can build the GPFS software suite and kernel modules with the single command provided by IBM, being: /usr/lpp/mmfs/bin/mmbuildgpl

# /usr/lpp/mmfs/bin/mmbuildgpl

mmbuildgpl: Building GPL (5.2.3.3) module begins at ....
--------------------------------------------------------
Verifying Kernel Header...
  kernel version = 51400570 (514000570030000, 5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6.x86_64, 5.14.0-570.30) 
  module include dir = /lib/modules/5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6.x86_64/build/include 
  module build dir   = /lib/modules/5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6.x86_64/build 
  kernel source dir  = /usr/src/linux-5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6.x86_64/include 
  Found valid kernel header file under /usr/src/kernels/5.14.0-570.30.1.el9_6.x86_64/include
Getting Kernel Cipher mode...
   Will use skcipher routines
Verifying Compiler...
  make is present at /bin/make
  cpp is present at /bin/cpp
  gcc is present at /bin/gcc
  g++ is present at /bin/g++
  ld is present at /bin/ld
Verifying Additional System Headers...
  Verifying kernel-headers is installed ...
    Command: /bin/rpm -q kernel-headers  
    The required package kernel-headers is installed
make World ...
make InstallImages ...
--------------------------------------------------------
mmbuildgpl: Building GPL module completed successfully at ....
--------------------------------------------------------

Reimage your VPS with our Ubuntu 24.04 template.

Login to your VPS as root and run:

apt update && apt upgrade

Then install nodejs & npm with:

apt install nodejs npm

Now you can install claude-code with:

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

With the above installed you can then run the “claude” command in your project’s directory, eg:

mkdir -p claude-project/1 && cd claude-project/1 && claude

Here’s the site where the old CentOS Linux Distros archive their final repositories.

http://archive.kernel.org/centos-vault/

Final command line is:

OPENSSL_CONF=~/.ssh/openssl.cnf ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o HostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa -o HostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-dss -o PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms=+ssh-dss -o PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa -o KexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1 -o MACS=+hmac-sha1 -o PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes=+ssh-rsa -o PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa $USER@$HOST

Where ~/.ssh/openssl.cnf is:

.include /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf
[openssl_init]
alg_section = evp_properties
[evp_properties]
rh-allow-sha1-signatures = yes

We’re installing a 2nd fibre link to our Adelaide POP.

This link will be through Vocus on physical separate & diverse fibre paths to our Adelaide POP and will allow greater Internet access redundancy & capacity for us in Adelaide.

This mirrors how we do our fibre connectivity to the Internet in our main Sydney POP and it will increase the level of service from our Adelaide POP.

This next fibre link in Adelaide will take a couple of months to get online now that it’s ordered & I’ll update when it’s close or online.

UPDATE from September 2025: This new link is online & working well for us.

Regards,
Richard.

To get yum working again in your old CentOS 7 Linux host, over-write your existing CentOS 7 Linux Repositories with the files from the git repo listed, via the following:

cd /etc/ ; git clone https://github.com/tkne/centos-7-repo.git yum.repos.d

Execute the following command to retrieve your display and allow X11 clients to connect back to your X11 display that made the SSH connection into the remote host running the X11 client. eg: firefox

xauth add $(xauth -f ~YOURUSERNAME/.Xauthority list|tail -1)

Where YOURUSERNAME is the username of your command line or shell or whatever which ran the ssh -X connection to the remote host.

Run the above xauth command after sudo’ing to root (or other target user).

FYI,
Richard.

Our CentOS 9 Image works with the following to provide a working OpenVAS install.

Login to your CentOS 9 VPS & become the root user and run the following commands:

dnf upgrade -y
dnf -y install wget
dnf config-manager –set-enabled crb
dnf install epel-release -y
dnf update -y

Then reboot.

After reboot re-login to the shell command line as root and download & run the installer for the Atomic Repository, which is done with:

wget -q -O - https://updates.atomicorp.com/installers/atomic |  sh

This is an interactive process and you’ll need to accept the T&Cs etc for it to proceed and complete.

Once the above installs & commands are done, you can start the install of OpenVAS, via DNF:

dnf install gvm -y

This takes a while but once done you can start the configuration of OpenVAS with:

gvm-setup

This take a very long time, many hours (can be 6-10+ hours for us in Australia), just wait, it will complete & it has good error detection and retry/resync on failed downloads, so let it run. Maybe run it in a screen or other non-interruptable terminal login session eg: tmux.

At the end of ‘gvm-setup’ it’ll prompt you for your “admin” user’s password that you need to set.

After that it restarts itself and you’re ready to login to your VPS IP Address website (ie: https://VPS IP Address & accept the self-generated Cert) with the “admin” user’s password that you entered.

FYI and holler if you need help with your OpenVAS VPS at Network Presence.

Regards,
Richard.

’tis the season for multi-national companies to be raising their billing rates to Australians.

This time its our Sydney Data Centre, Equinix, increasing their costs to us by 5% from January, as is their contracted right.

As per our other posts about such cost rises, we’d like customers to consider buying more VPS resources (eg: more CPUs or more RAM or more diskspace, etc) via our website, to help fund these cost increases, while giving more resources to your own VPS.

Regards,
Richard.

A note that Microsoft and cPanel increase their licensing costs to us by 10% every year around this time.

But because we use Paypal Subscriptions in our web based ordering systems, we can’t pass those cost increases on to our customers.

We’ll be contacting these customers (Windows & cPanel VPS) asking them to consider adding more resources to their VPS (eg: more CPUs or more RAM or more diskspace, etc) to help fund these cost increases on our end, while getting some benefit for themselves being the extra resources for their VPS.

These various extra VPS resources products are listed in our Professional Services pages.

Thanks,
Richard.