Installation

ClusterShell is distributed in several packages. On RedHat-like OS, we recommend to use the RPM package (.rpm) distribution.

As system software for cluster, ClusterShell is primarily made for system-wide installation to be used by system administrators. However, changes have been made so that it's now possible to install it without root access (see Installing ClusterShell as user using PIP).

Requirements

ClusterShell should work with any Unix [1] operating systems which provides Python 2.7 or 3.x and OpenSSH or any compatible Secure Shell clients.

Furthermore, ClusterShell's engine has been optimized when the poll() syscall is available or even better, when the epoll_wait() syscall is available (Linux only).

For instance, ClusterShell is known to work on the following operating systems:

  • GNU/Linux
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (Python 2.7)
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (Python 3.6)
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (Python 3.9)
    • Fedora 30 and above (Python 2.7 to 3.10+)
    • Debian 10 "buster" (Python 3.7)
    • Debian 11 "bullseye" (Python 3.9)
    • Ubuntu 20.04 (Python 3.8)
  • Mac OS X 12+ (Python 2.7 and 3.8)

Distribution

ClusterShell is an open-source project distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version or later (LGPL v2.1+), which means that many possibilities are offered to the end user. Also, as a software library, ClusterShell should remain easily available to everyone. Hopefully, packages are currently available for Fedora Linux, RHEL (through EPEL repositories), Debian, Arch Linux and more.

Python support overview

As seen in Requirements, ClusterShell supports Python 2.7 and onwards, at least up to Python 3.10 at the time of writing.

The table below provides a few examples of versions of Python supported by ClusterShell packages as found in some common Linux distributions:

Operating System System Python version used by the clustershell tools Alternate Python support packaged (version-suffixed tools)
RHEL 7 Python 2.7 Python 3.6
RHEL 8 Python 3.6  
RHEL 9 Python 3.9  
Fedora 36 Python 3.10  
openSUSE Leap 15 Python 2.7 Python 3.6
SUSE SLES 12 Python 2.7 Python 3.4
SUSE SLES 15 Python 2.7 Python 3.6
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Python 3.6  
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Python 3.8  

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

ClusterShell packages are maintained on Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux EPEL for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its compatible spinoffs such as Alma Linux and Rocky Linux. At the time of writing, ClusterShell 1.9 is available on EPEL 7, 8 and 9.

Install ClusterShell from EPEL

First you have to enable the yum EPEL repository. We recommend to download and install the EPEL repository RPM package. On CentOS, this can be easily done using the following command:

$ yum --enablerepo=extras install epel-release

Then, the ClusterShell installation procedure is quite the same as for Fedora Updates, for instance:

$ yum install clustershell

With EPEL 7, the Python 2 modules and tools are installed by default. If interested in Python 3 support, simply install the additional ClusterShell's Python 3 subpackage using the following command:

$ yum install python36-clustershell

Note

The Python 3 subpackage is named python34-clustershell or python36-clustershell instead of python3-clustershell on EPEL 7 only.

On EPEL 7, Python 3 versions of the tools are installed as tool-pythonversion, like clush-3.6, cluset-3.6 or nodeset-3.6.

With EPEL 8 and 9, however, Python 3 is the system default, and Python 2 has been deprecated. Thus only Python 3 is supported by the EPEL clustershell packages, the tools are using Python 3 by default and are not suffixed anymore.

Fedora

At the time of writing, ClusterShell 1.9 is available on Fedora 37 (releases being maintained by the Fedora Project).

Install ClusterShell from Fedora Updates

ClusterShell is part of Fedora, so it is really easy to install it with dnf, although you have to keep the Fedora updates default repository. The following command checks whether the packages are available on a Fedora system:

$ dnf list \*clustershell
Available Packages
clustershell.noarch                     1.8-1.fc26                fedora
python2-clustershell.noarch             1.8-1.fc26                fedora
python3-clustershell.noarch             1.8-1.fc26                fedora

Then, install ClusterShell's library module and tools using the following command:

$ dnf install clustershell

Prior to Fedora 31, Python 2 modules and tools were installed by default. If interested in Python 3 support, simply install the additional ClusterShell's Python 3 subpackage using the following command:

$ dnf install python3-clustershell

Prior to Fedora 31, Python 3 versions of the tools are installed as tool-pythonversion, like clush-3.6, cluset-3.6 or nodeset-3.6.

On Fedora 31 and onwards, only Python 3 is supported.

Install ClusterShell from Fedora Updates Testing

Recent releases of ClusterShell are first available through the Test Updates repository of Fedora, then it is later pushed to the stable updates repository. The following dnf command will also checks for packages availability in the updates-testing repository:

$ dnf list \*clustershell --enablerepo=updates-testing

To install, also add the --enablerepo=updates-testing option, for instance:

$ dnf install clustershell --enablerepo=updates-testing

openSUSE

ClusterShell is available in openSUSE Tumbleweed (Factory) and Leap since 2017:

$ zypper search clustershell
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name                 | Summary                                               | Type
--+----------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+--------
  | clustershell         | Python framework for efficient cluster administration | package
  | python2-clustershell | ClusterShell module for Python 2                      | package
  | python3-clustershell | ClusterShell module for Python 3                      | package

To install ClusterShell on openSUSE, use:

$ zypper install clustershell

Python 2 module and tools are installed by default. If interested in Python 3 support, simply install the additional ClusterShell's Python 3 subpackage using the following command:

$ zypper install python3-clustershell

Python 3 versions of the tools are installed as tool-pythonversion, like clush-3.6, cluset-3.6 or nodeset-3.6.

Debian

ClusterShell is available in Debian main repository (since 2011).

To install it on Debian, simply use:

$ apt-get install clustershell

You can get the latest version on:

* http://packages.debian.org/sid/clustershell

Ubuntu

Like Debian, it is easy to get and install ClusterShell on Ubuntu (also with apt-get). To do so, please first enable the universe repository. ClusterShell is available since "Natty" release (11.04):

Installing ClusterShell using PIP

Installing ClusterShell as root using PIP

To install ClusterShell as a standard Python package using PIP [2] as root:

$ pip install ClusterShell

Or alternatively, using the source tarball:

$ pip install ClusterShell-1.x.tar.gz

Installing ClusterShell as user using PIP

To install ClusterShell as a standard Python package using PIP as an user:

$ pip install --user ClusterShell

Or alternatively, using the source tarball:

$ pip install --user ClusterShell-1.x.tar.gz

Then, you just need to update your PYTHONPATH environment variable to be able to import the library and PATH to easily use the Tools:

$ export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:~/.local/lib
$ export PATH=$PATH:~/.local/bin

Configuration files are installed in ~/.local/etc/clustershell and are automatically loaded before system-wide ones (for more info about supported user config files, please see the clush.conf or Node groups config sections).

Source

Current source is available through Git, use the following command to retrieve the latest development version from the repository:

$ git clone git@github.com:cea-hpc/clustershell.git
[1]Unix in the same sense of the Availability: Unix notes in the Python documentation
[2]pip is a tool for installing and managing Python packages, such as those found in the Python Package Index