[slurm-users] Novice Slurm Upgrade Questions

[Ole Holm Nielsen]

Hi Jason,

Slurm upgrading should be pretty simple, IMHO.  I've been through this 
multiple times, and my Slurm Wiki has detailed upgrade documentation:
https://wiki.fysik.dtu.dk/niflheim/Slurm_installation#upgrading-slurm

Building RPMs is described in this page as well:
https://wiki.fysik.dtu.dk/niflheim/Slurm_installation#build-slurm-rpms

I hope this helps.

/Ole


On 04-12-2020 20:36, Jason Simms wrote:
> Thank you for being such a helpful resource for All Things Slurm; I 
> sincerely appreciate the helpful feedback. Right now, we are running 
> 20.02 and considering upgrading to 20.11 during our next maintenance 
> window in January. This will be the first time we have upgraded Slurm, 
> so understandably we are somewhat nervous and have some questions.
> 
> I am able to download the source and build RPMs successfully. What is 
> unclear to me is whether I have to adjust anything in the slurm.spec 
> file or use a .rpmmacros file to control certain aspects of the 
> installation. Since this would be an upgrade, rather than a new install, 
> do I have to adjust, e.g., the --prefix value, and all other settings 
> (X11 support, etc.)? Or, will a yum update "correctly" put the files 
> where they are on my system, using settings from the existing 20.02 version?
> 
> We purchased the system from a vendor, and of course they use custom 
> scripts to build and install Slurm, and those are tailored for an 
> initial installation, not an upgrade. Their advice to us was, don't 
> upgrade if you don't need to, which seems reasonable, except that many 
> of you respond to initial requests for help by recommending an upgrade. 
> And in any case, Slurm doesn't upgrade nicely from more than two major 
> versions back, so I'm hesitant to go too long without patching.
> 
> I'm terribly sorry for my ignorance of all this. But I really lament how 
> terrible most resources are about all this. They assume that you have 
> built the RPMs already, without offering any real guidance as to how to 
> adjust relevant options, or even whether that is a requirement for an 
> upgrade vs. a fresh installation.
> 
> Any guidance would be most welcome.