Nevis Applications Server

The students and teachers at Nevis require the use of many common programs: ROOT, CERNLIB, Geant4, and so on. It would be a waste of disk space (not to mention manpower) to install and maintain all these software packages on each system of the cluster individually.

Instead, all such programs are kept on one system, the applications server. This system exports an applications directory (/usr/nevis) to all the other systems in the cluster via automount. Any changes made to the software on the applications server is rapidly available to the entire cluster. The current applications server is library.

A general question: what programs, applications, or utilities should go on the applications server? The policy is this: If only one workgroup uses a software package, then that package should be installed on that workgroup's server and maintained by that group; for example, the D0 group maintains the D0 analysis software on their server, karthur. If a package is used by more than one working group, or is of general interest (such as ROOT), it's kept on the applications server and maintained by the Nevis research computer staff.