How to Setup OSG & VPB clustered Build Environment in Linux as Step-By-Step Tutorial

Basically it is possible to render virtualPlanetBuilder Databases on MS Windows and Linux. Unfortunately MS Windows is not stable enough, maybe caused by NTFS and the heavy systemload (RAM, CPU, HDD). To render large databases, it is absolutely necessary to use VPB on linux. This HowTo is guide to setup a proper

System installation and basic preparation

• Install Kubuntu 9.10 64 bit (64 bit is important to prevent your system to crash due to some ressource limits)
• Activate proprietary video driver: Menu -> system -> driver. --> reboot
• Link shell to desktop
• install basic packages

  aptitude update
  aptitude install vim
  

Setup Raid, if nessecary

• Install package:

  aptitude install dmraid
  

• Read in existing Windows or Linux raids and activate them

  dmraid -r
  dmraid -ay -v
  

• Add raids an windows Drives to fstab

  mkdir /mnt/disk1
  mkdir /mnt/disk2
  
  vim /etc/fstab
  
  dev/mapper/isw_befejdgeeb_Volume01     /mnt/disk2      auto    defaults        0       0
  /dev/sda2                               /mnt/disk1      auto    defaults        0       0
  

lookup the devicename in /dev/mapper after the last dmraid command

[Optional] Using Synergy to control the whole cluster with only one keyboard and mouse

• Install synergy

  aptitude install synergy quicksynergy
  

howto: ​http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-configure-synergy-in-six-steps/

Compile and install OSG and its dependencies

• Install osg-dependencies and osg like ​http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Support/PlatformSpecifics/Debian-Dependencies

Use this updated list which is adapted for kubuntu 9.10:

aptitude update
aptitude install cmake subversion g++ libx11-dev nvidia-glx-185-dev libglu-dev
aptitude install libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libtiff-dev libfreetype6-dev libgdal-dev gdal-bin
aptitude install libcurl4-dev dcmtk libdcmtk1-dev libgtk2.0-dev libxul-dev libpoppler-glib-dev
aptitude install libvncserver-dev librsvg2-dev libsdl-dev libxml2-dev
aptitude install xxdiff dos2unix libboost-regex doxygen graphviz subversion-tools

To use the new introduced resume function, yu must use at least OSG 2.9.9 with VPB 0.9.11 Basically: VPB versions are bound to special OSG versions. (like 0.9.10 is bound to osg 2.8.2)

• Compile OSG 2.9.9

  cd /tmp
  svn co http://www.openscenegraph.org/svn/osg/OpenSceneGraph/tags/OpenSceneGraph-2.9.9 OpenSceneGraph
  cd OpenSceneGraph
  ./configure
  make -j 8 
  make install
  cd ..
  

To build OSG in debug mode, edit the configure file and change the build type to Debug, then repeak the last instructions.

• ... or Compile newest OSG from SVN

  cd /tmp
  svn co http://www.openscenegraph.org/svn/osg/OpenSceneGraph/trunk OpenSceneGraph
  cd OpenSceneGraph
  ./configure
  make -j 8 
  make install
  cd ..
  

• Add OSG environment variables to make all osg binaries callable via interactive shell:

  vim /home/fsd/.bash_profile
  export PATH=$PATH:/home/fsd/OpenSceneGraph/bin
  export OSG_FILE_PATH=/home/fsd/sampledata/:/home/fsd/sampledata/Images
  
  vim /etc/bash.bashrc
  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/fsd/OpenSceneGraph/lib/:/home/fsd/VirtualPlanetBuilder/lib/
  

reboot to load changes and allow VPB compiling.

• Compile VPB 0.9.11:

  svn checkout http://www.openscenegraph.org/svn/VirtualPlanetBuilder/tags/VirtualPlanetBuilder-0.9.11/ VirtualPlanetBuilder
  cd VirtualPlanetBuilder
  ./configure
  make -j 8
  make install
  

• or Compile newest VPB from SVN:

  svn checkout http://www.openscenegraph.org/svn/VirtualPlanetBuilder/trunk VirtualPlanetBuilder
  cd VirtualPlanetBuilder
  ./configure
  make -j 8
  make install
  

• Download Sampledata :

  svn co http://www.openscenegraph.org/svn/osg/OpenSceneGraph-Data/tags/OpenSceneGraph-Data-2.8.0 sampledata
  

• Configure ressource limits

  sudo vim /etc/security/limits.conf
  
  # End of file
  fsd  soft    nofile  65353
  fsd  hard    nofile  65353
  

Cluster preparation

Requirements for successful use of the cluster

• Source data must be available on all nodes under the identical path (best solution: local source data on each node located at the same path)
• Destination folder must be shared over any network file system and must be available on all nodes under the identical path. Easiest solution: sshfs)
• Compile-script must be called from the destination directory (because all tasks contain the "run-path", this must be accessible by the executing node -> "run-path" must be the shared destination folder).

To fulfill this requirements, let's assume this setup:

• One machine acts as server node and has the IP 192.168.0.55
• Two machines act as client nodes and have the IPs 192.168.0.54 and 192.168.0.56
• sshfs is used as network filesystem
• the username on all nodes is fsd
• The destination folder for the compiled database is /geodata
• The local drive with geo source data is /localSourceData

To use vpbmaster clustered, all maschines must have access to the server node. Open a fresh shell and typ in as standart user (NOT root!):

ssh-keygen -t rsa
<if asked for passphrase: Press enter for no passphrase - otherwise the login would not be passwordless :)>

ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_rsa.pub fsd@192.168.0.55

Because remote ssh commands do not invoke the environment settings of an interactive shell, ssh must be prepared to provide the required environment variables also for ssh non-interactive-shell: vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config

PermitUserEnvironment yes

vim /home/fsd/.ssh/environment

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/fsd/OpenSceneGraph/lib/:/home/fsd/VirtualPlanetBuilder/lib/
OSG_FILE_PATH=/home/fsd/sampledata/:/home/fsd/sampledata/Images

To share over network the destination folder to write the database in, install sshfs:

aptitude install sshfs

Create Folder for the local source data and shared destination data:

mkdir /mnt/disk3            # for source data
mkdir /geodata              # for destination data, shared over sshfs

Use Cluster

Preparation after boot of all clients

• mount at the server node the destination harddrive into the appropriate folder:

  mount /dev/sde1 /geodata
  

• mount on all client nodes the destination directory of the server node over sshfs.

Let's assume the server has the IP 192.168.0.56:

sshfs fsd@192.168.0.56:/geodata /geodata
<enter password of the server node>

Create the compile script

To allow easy recalls of the database build command, create a script: vim /etc/geodata/compile_BRD_Sued.sh

#!/bin/sh

vpbmaster --machines machinepool.txt\ 
 --geocentric\ 
 --terrain\ 
 --compressed\ 
 -d /localSourceData/srtm-V4.2-europa\ 
 -t /localSourceData/Muenchen_25cm\ 
 -t /localSourceData/geocontent/Deutschland_1m/Sued\ 
 -t /localSourceData/bluemarble\ 
 -o /geoData/BRD1m_MUC0.25m_srtmEU_BM/terrain.ive

Compile Database

If everything is setup correctly, the processing step ist very easy. Open an new shell on the server node and call as standard user (NOT ROOT!):

cd /geodata
./compile_BRD_SUED.sh

While the database is creating, it is possible to watch the actual progress in another console. Because files are written and modified, the viewer application will give warnings or will terminate in few cases. This happens due to the creation progress and does not affect or modify the database, please ignore it. After finished creation, this should not happen, of course ;)

Because system load during database creation is very high, on some systems the operation system or the compile process crash. If these crashes happens at the beginning of the rendering process, please check if your "openfile" limits are set correctly

Resume compiling database after crash

See ​http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/VirtualPlanetBuilder/wiki/Resume

To resume the crashed compile process, execute on the server node:

cd /geodata
vpbmaster --machines machinepool.txt --tasks build_master.tasks

Take care NOT to call the compile script again, in this case all compiled tasks will be resetted to status "pending"

See TerrainData? for data sources.

Troubleshooting

If compiling fails at the beginning:

• reboot
• Please check if you use a 64 bit operating system
• check your limits: {{limits -a}}

If compiling fails after many hours or days:

• Maybe your OS runs out of any ressource, so reboot and resume (read above)
• Check your hardware if resuming do not help.

If only local threads are executed, but no remote ones:

• Check your ssh setup, if you can login passwordless from the server node to the client nodes
• Check your ssh setup, if your environmental variables on the client nodes are available if you login to a client node