2024.1.0 Release Notes

New Features

Internal Number Products Case Number Description
VOV-14441 Accelerator None All config.tcl, and *.tcl related source files using syntax such as FOO(slave,bar) have now been updated to use FOO(tasker,bar).
VOV-14812 Accelerator None Added functionality to nc info for displaying I/O profiling performance statistics.
  1. Run an NC job with the nc run -ioprofile option for job I/O profiling.
  2. Execute nc info -ioprofile JOB to view performance stats.
Note: The above command displays stats after the job completes. It will display a message if the job is still running.
VOV-15409 Accelerator None The Accelerator User Guide has been updated to reflect the new Job I/O Profiling feature.
VOV-15610 All CS0384959 Administrators can configure $VOVDIR/local/equivalences to set symbolic name to physical path pairs. This file should not be removed. The template file $VOVDIR/etc/equivalences has been given comment lines that describe how to use this configuration file. A note in the file is added to inform admins that the $VOVDIR/local/equivalences file should not be removed, or unpredictable results could occur.
VOV-15803 Accelerator, Accelerator Plus None Accelerator Plus now supports multiple instances of the vovwxd daemon to be configured for dynamically requesting taskers from other job scheduler(s) or base queue(s). Daemons can be started and configured and managed via SWD/autostart/start_wx_daemon.tcl, vovdaemonmgr utility, and vovwxconnect.tcl same as for a single vovwxd daemon. For example, vovdaemonmgr start -v -v -v -v vovwxd vovwx2d would start vovwxd daemons configured in SWD/vovwxd and SWD/vovwx2d respectively.
VOV-15825 All CS0411539, CS0433472 Added config(tasker.minWaitToReconnect) parameter in policy.tcl that specifies how long should a tasker wait and try to reconnect to the server before initiating the failover election process.
VOV-15956 Accelerator, Monitor None Improved logging messages for registry permission errors and RDS startup with an invalid Altair Monitor name configured.
VOV-16009 Accelerator None Added the ability to create reservations for user groups.
VOV-16041 Accelerator None The capability for REST authentication via VOV security keys has been added. The new authorizeWithKey() function added to the vov_rest_v3.py Python module issues a REST JWT Access Token, and takes as input a private user VOV key and the public vovserver VOV key. See vovsecurity -h for more details.
VOV-16140 Accelerator CS0448878 A systemd script altair-vovtasker.service was added to $VOVDIR/etc/boot. It starts a tasker named mytaskername in the vnc project as user vovadmin at startup. Previously, Accelerator shipped only an initd version of this script with no Systemd support.
VOV-16169 Allocator, Monitor None SSL/TLS is now enabled by default for VOV products LM, and LA. These products will open webports by default, and the web UI will have URLs beginning with "https:".
VOV-16190 All None A new trace parameter has been added, named trustUserReportedByClient, which is set to 0 by default. Actual client uid and gid values are sent by vov clients and are checked server side on protocol startup if the flag is set to zero. If the values do not match, an error is issued to prevent rootless container mode usage under vovserver.
VOV-16222 All None Added a new scheduler policy parameter, taskerBusyUponDispatch, to control whether the scheduler sets the tasker state to "BUSY" upon dispatching a job to it. Short job scheduling performance may be improved by setting this parameter to 0. Additionally, system taskers are no longer added to the "recent taskers" list. This is done to avoid an unwanted delay in job dispatching for queues that do not have many taskers connected to it.
VOV-16259 Accelerator, Monitor None A secure communication mode is implemented for communication between Accelerator's RDS service and Monitor's event port. The secure communication is enabled by setting the rds.secure configuration parameter to 1 and following the documented steps for proper configuration.
VOV-16264 Accelerator Plus CS0464266 Implemented the -forcedequeue option on nc run. Like the -force option, it will place prior jobs that use the same -l output log file into sleeping state. If the prior job is currently running, the -force option will have no effect, but the new -forcedequeue option will stop the prior running job and put it into sleeping state. See nc run -h for details. The use of this new option is not recommended.
VOV-16266 All None Added FSRANK, which is the FairShare rank of the FairShare group to which a job belongs, to SDS metrics for buckets.
VOV-16303 Accelerator None The vovsecurity command is added to manage VOV security keys. See the vovsecurity -h help screen for details.
VOV-16338 Accelerator CS0474595 A pty port range for the run -I commands can be specified in ${VOVDIR}/local/vncConfig/${VOV_PROJECT_NAME}.tcl. For example, setenv VOV_PTY_PORT_RANGE 13300:14299 would specify the default range. If a run -I job is submitted and a PTY port in this range is not available then the submission will fail to add a job.
VOV-16341 All None Added a new SDS topic, jobstats, containing cpu, ram, and io usage stats for jobs.
VOV-16343 Accelerator None Enhanced scheduler to skip jobs conflicting with the future tasker or resource reservation so that subsequent non-conflicting jobs can run. It can be controlled by server config and policy parameters skipConflictingJobsInDispatchLoop and unsetSkipFlagOnConfictingJobs.
VOV-16355 All None Support for RHEL 9 and equivalent Linus distributions -- Rocky, Alma, and OEL -- has been added to the Altair Accelerator products.
VOV-16364 Accelerator, Monitor None Recent feature improvements caused issue with LM DB config failing upon restart after early server failure. This has been fixed.
VOV-16367 Accelerator, FlowTracer None When RDS is active, matching of jobs to license checkouts is now able to utilize PID information for software licensing systems that track and report the PIDs of the processes that make checkouts.
VOV-16409 Accelerator None The maximum allowed value of the schedMaxEffort policy parameter has been increased to 90.
VOV-16472 Monitor None The ldap.cfg LDAP configuration file in SWD/config supports a new option to require that an LDAP service that Monitor binds to uses CA-signed SSL/TLS certificates. This mode is off by default, but to activate it set the following in ldap.cfg: set LDAP(validCertificate) 1
VOV-16485 Accelerator, Accelerator Plus None The VOV Reference Guide has been updated to include information regarding the new VOV Security Keys feature.
VOV-16490 Monitor CS0499980 The procedures for upgrading a database in Monitor using Windows have been added to the Installation Guide online help.
VOV-16577 FlowTracer None The FlowTracer web UI has a new flow graph viewing and control page. This web page is a modernized alternative to using the vovconsole thick client for interaction with FlowTracer flowgraphs.
VOV-16583 Accelerator None Separated read and write results. Added Effective BW and Latency/Op to the output of nc info -ioprofile.
VOV-16636 Monitor None Fixed issue with the download icons missing in the HTML format of the resulting batch report. The HTML format of the batch report is now in line with the style in the browser.

Resolved Issues

Internal Number Products Case Number Description
VOV-14506 Accelerator None Removed the non-functional "Authorize" button from the REST API interactive documentation page, aka the "Swagger" page.
VOV-14788 FlowTracer None Fix a problem in FlowTracer whereby an attempt to kill a job would result in multiple bkill requests to the LSF base queue.
VOV-15649 Accelerator None Fix the diagnostic error messages reported by Accelerator products when an Altair standalone license file is being used and this standalone license file is valid on a different hostid. The error being reported now correctly says "HostID does not match license".
VOV-15756 All None Improved the documentation about properly configuring and running the Altair License Manager server with Accelerator products.
VOV-15817 All, Accelerator CS0332038, CS0475775 Fix an issue that prevented secure LDAP connections from Monitor vovserver. The secure, ssl/tls-enabled connections are attempted if LDAP(ssl) is set to 1 in the ldap.cfg configuration file.
VOV-15818 Accelerator CS0413116 Fixed a bug in Windows installer that caused an incomplete installation with missing tcl/vtcl/ package.
VOV-15968 Accelerator, Accelerator Plus CS0435337 Added support for controlling the minhw server parameter in policy.tcl. When calling the vovservermgr config enableWaitReasons command, old waitreasons will now be deleted when disabling, and waitreason counts will be updated when enabling.
VOV-16006 Accelerator CS0418446 Running and rerunning a job with nc run and nc rerun no longer causes vovserver to perform a stat call. Similarly for vovconsole & the node editor.
VOV-16027 Accelerator Plus CS0424970 Wx taskers will now update fields such as memory, ram free, swap free, tmp space, load averages, and idle time after taskers maxlife has been reached.
VOV-16139 Monitor CS0449822 Fixed issue that caused the name of a monitor agent to be ignored, resulting in the default name (the host name) being used.
VOV-16184 FlowTracer CS0449650 Suppressed the bash function parsing messages that were appearing when using the ves command.
VOV-16191 Hero CS0457702 Significantly reduced the run time taken by the vovemulmgr config command on large configurations. Added the emul.cfg Zebu emulator specific option CONNECTIVITY = "extended". Updated vovemulmgr config to allow scheduling to continue during the config operation.
VOV-16199 Monitor CS0421670 Allow Monitor customer group names longer than 80 characters in reports.
VOV-16206 Accelerator, Accelerator Plus CS0461223 Fixed a vovserver crash that happened when multiple parallel REST job run requests (with different resources) were submitted.
VOV-16215 Allocator CS0461778 In Allocator config file, if a site is present and the user edits the site nickname, now can see the result in Allocator Resource plot page without stopping and starting the project again.
VOV-16221 Accelerator, Accelerator Plus CS0463085 Fixed incorrect vovselect tool value when using vwi & hero_adapter.
VOV-16224 All None The TCL/TK language interpreter package that is packaged with and used by Accelerator products has been upgraded from version 8.6.5 to 8.6.13.
VOV-16230 Monitor CS0462741 In Monitor, when adding a new monitor via UI (Admin > Monitors), if any of the available fields is written wrapped into double quotes, the confil_aux.tcl file where they are stored will not be broken.
VOV-16236 Accelerator, Accelerator Plus CS0464846 Fixed a potential log error when bogus vov protocol packets are sent to vovserver via a security scanning tool.
VOV-16239 Accelerator, Accelerator Plus CS0464909, CS0464910 Fixed issue that prevented DNS lookups from succeeding when using the portable architecture on CentOS 6.
VOV-16254 Monitor None Fixed issue that prevented tasker load graphs from being rendered on the Machine Load page that is located under the Network tab.
VOV-16263 FlowTracer None Fixed issue that prevented jobs from being dispatched when a base-queue-only taskerlist was requested.
VOV-16273 Accelerator None To address a potential SSL vulnerability, SSL/TLS renegotiation was disabled in the internal webserver when support for older TLS/SSL versions than TLS1.3 is enabled.
VOV-16274 Accelerator None Made guards against malicious HTTP GET file requests more strict.
VOV-16289 Monitor CS0467401 Fixed issue with the Checkout Statistics report with cost reporting enabled where report numbers were elevated.
VOV-16290 Accelerator None When a user browsed the NC dashboard page URL before having logged in, a blank dashboard page was displayed instead of sending the browser to the login page. This has been fixed.
VOV-16315 Accelerator None Enhanced scheduler to skip the jobs conflicting with the future tasker reservation so that subsequent non-conflicting jobs get dispatched. This can be controlled using the policy parameter skipConflictingJobsInDispatchLoop.
VOV-16328 Accelerator Plus None When a WX queue was connected to a base NC queue that has SSL enabled (default in recent releases), some spurious "Connection failed" error messages were printed in SWD/vovwxd/*.log. This was fixed.
VOV-16340 All None ROLLOVERTS field has been added to property events in the vov-jobdata topic
VOV-16371 Accelerator, Accelerator Plus, Hero None Single-slot taskers will now report their status as "full" instead of "working" when a task is running on them.
VOV-16381 Accelerator None Fixes an issue where specifying incorrect values for a PERCENT resource in an nc run command, for example, nc run -r PERCENT/abc -- sleep 1 would give an inconsistent error message.
VOV-16387 Monitor None When webserver=internal and webport enabled, files such as batch reports that are placed in SWD/html would fail to be served, resulting in a NOT FOUND error when requested. This has been fixed.
VOV-16413 All None The version of the TCL TCLLIB library included in the Accelerator products package has been updated to version 1.21.
VOV-16432 FlowTracer None Fixed issue that prevented splines from being rendered in vovconsole on ARM hosts.
VOV-16439 Accelerator, Accelerator Plus CS0473552 EINTR on system primitives will now retry and should not disconnect from server for Linux
VOV-16440 Accelerator None Added support for relative paths in the installation utility install.sh.
VOV-16441 Accelerator None Fixed an issue in the installer script install.sh that caused the -platforms option to honor only 1 of multiple values passed in.
VOV-16446 Monitor CS0483193 Fixing an issue with the ftlm_batch_report utility that would produce two different representations of the tree map for the same feature. There was a difference in the produced tree map graph when comparing the plot of a single feature and comparing the plot of this feature when plotting all features of the tag.
VOV-16448 Accelerator None The robustness of complex Distributed Parallel jobs with many components was improved. The nc rerun command now supports the -after <time> option. Jobs that exit with the special exit status values between 201-215 to be automatically rescheduled now have their logs appended to rather than overwritten. Added vtk_prop_decr_and_get to provide symmetry with vtk_prop_incr_and_get.
VOV-16470 Accelerator None The "http" or "https" part of the URL displayed on the REST documentation page was wrong in some circumstances. This was fixed.
VOV-16479 Allocator None Removed the requirement that the LA project be enabled before using the lamgr reset command with the -name PROJECT option.
VOV-16484 Monitor CS0419423 In LM product, all text-edit boxes display has changed. Now the text-edit boxes are displayed in the maximum width possible (full screen width) and text lines are not wrapped (if lines are longer that space available, a horizontal scroll bar appears to show all the content).
VOV-16494 Accelerator None On systems where the hostname command is configured to print the long fully qualified host name, the nc info -ioprofile JOB command could not successfully find the I/O profiling results that had been generated by a job launched with the -ioprofile option. This has been fixed.
VOV-16497 Accelerator CS0500300 If the default vovtriggerd trigger callback is used (triggerCallBack), the TRIGGER property must be set to a Tcl proc defined in vovtriggerd/config.tcl. This is to improve security.
VOV-16501 Accelerator None The following improvements were made to the nc gui -ioprofile JOB display:
  1. Last column will show the last valid value and will be zero only when there is no data present for the graph.
  2. We are now showing the per second values on the graph. The units are also changed to kB/s and #/s.
  3. Help button is moved to the top right corner.
VOV-16502 Accelerator None The following improvements were made to the nc gui -ioprofile JOB display:
  1. If the job is running, the graph will begin at the job's start time, and will end at the current time.
  2. If the job is completed, the graph will begin at the job's start time, and will end at the job's end time.
  3. Removed the interval button from nc gui -ioprofile.
VOV-16506 All None Fixed an issue with the new ROLLOVER_TS implementation where existing jobs might get a new ROLLOVER_TS in the Kafka event.
VOV-16541 All None Fixed issue that caused the scheduler to ignore tasker HW resources that have both letters and numbers in their name.
VOV-16550 Accelerator, Accelerator Plus, Monitor None Fixed issue that prevented Monitor non-admin users from generating and viewing historical license usage reports.
VOV-16573 Accelerator None Changed -ioprofile data labels using more appropriate terminology
VOV-16591 Allocator None The lamgr reset command is supposed to reset the LA project enabled in the current shell, but instead it tried to reset LA project "la". This has been fixed.
VOV-16599 Accelerator None Added -l compatibility to nc run -ioprofile. A logfile name can be specified using the -l option when submitting a job with I/O profiling option.
VOV-16606 Accelerator None Fixed a crash that occurred when resources for REST job create requests were longer than 1024 characters.
VOV-16628 Accelerator None Fixed an issue where RDS could cause a server crash when removing/restarting old jobs.