Globus Toolkit® 3.2 Alpha Release Notes


The below contains high level descriptions of what is new in the following technology areas:
For more information please see resources specified in each of the technology sections.

Grid Services Core


The Globus Toolkit Grid Services Core component released in the 3.2 alpha release contains important bug fixes and improvements on existing functionality. Changes include better deactivate semantics, a change in the persistent grid service programming model, changes to the security descriptor format, updated third party jars and more. Further information can be found in the Core release notes.  

Security (GSI)


The Globus Toolkit Security component shipped in 3.2 alpha contains a slew of bug fixes and various improvements. Improvements of note are updated third party libraries, Certificate Revocation List (CRL) support in Java, support for pluggable authorization in the GridFTP and GT2 GRAM components and improved documentation. Also, the security component will no longer ship with the Globus CA certificate. Users requiring certificates for testing should take a look at the Globus Certificate Service or Simple CA. Further information can be found in the Security release notes.

GridFTP


The Globus Toolkit wuftpd based GridFTP server, its associated tools, and libraries in the 3.2 alpha release contains important bug fixes and improvements on existing functionality.  Improvements include support for platform independent, machine parseable, file info (MLST and MLSD commands), a new checksum command (CKSM), support for the Unix chmod command, and support for file globbing and directory moves, i.e. globus-url-copy is no longer restricted to a single file. globus-url-copy also now has command line options for all the equivalent client library functionality.
There is also a new, non-wuftpd based implementation of the GridFTP server available in the alpha. It is in the early stages of development and lacks many of the features, but it will give people a first look at the new server and its architecture.
Further information can be found in the GridFTP release notes.

XIO

Globus XIO is an extensible input/output library for the Globus Toolkit®. For this and future releases of the Globus Toolkit the globus_xio library will provide all input and output functionality for the C code.
Globus XIO will replace the globus_io library.  A portability layer is included with the release so legacy applications written to globus_io will be supported, however it is recommended that future applications code straight to the globus_xio API.
For more information on the globus_xio see:

http://www-unix.globus.org/developer/xio

Features:
  • simple intuitive open/close/read/write API
  • swappable IO implementations
  • simple API to many different types of IO

Current driver implementations:

  • transport drivers:
    • tcp
    • udp
    • file
  • transform drivers:
    • gsi
    • gssapi_ftp
    • ftp_cmd
    • http
Known issues:
  • framework has a bug that appears when a fast processor is heavily loaded yet the system performs IO operation extremely quickly. This bug only appears in threaded builds of Globus, and is actively being pursued.

GRAM


The Globus Toolkit Grid Services GRAM component in the 3.2 alpha release contains important bug fixes and improvements on existing functionality. Improvements include, local scheduler scripts that reduce the chance of errors due to NFS caching delays and increase scalability by reducing memory consumption, internationalization of MJS faults. Fixes include, MJS job recovery now works and UHE GRIM credential lifetime obeys user configuration. Further information can be found in the GRAM release notes.

CAS


Included in GT 3.2 Alpha is the first production release of the Community Authorization Service, or CAS. CAS is an authorization system that allows for fine-grain (e.g. per file) access control of Grid Resources. GT 3.2 Alpha includes the CAS Grid Service, which allows for creating and administering rights, client tools and libraries for using CAS, and a CAS-enabled GridFTP service (other CAS-enabled services are expected in the 3.4 release). More information on CAS can be found here
This version of CAS uses the OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) standard. Users should be aware that RSA Security has identified four patents it believes could be relevant to implementingcertain operational modes of the SAML specifications. The GlobusAlliance has established a license agreement with RSA covering usage of SAML in the Globus Toolkit, however users who redistribute SAML-enabled portions of the Globus Toolkit or use SAML-enabled portions in their own applications should understand the issue and may want to obtain a royalty-free license from RSA. For information regarding the patent claims and a royalty-free reciprocal license to the RSA patents, see:
http://www.rsasecurity.com/solutions/standards/saml/
For sublicense rights to the RSA patents under the Globus Toolkit Public License, see:
http://www.globus.org/Security/CAS/GT3/rsa-sublicense.html

Information Services

  • Aggregator API changes to facilitate more interesting service data aggregation services; as an example of this, we now have a second index service, which publishes content as an OGSI ServiceGroup.
  • The ogsi-find-service-data C client now supports XSLT, which means that you can write schema specific output without needing to write and link in new C code.
  • Software version information is now published through the hostinfo providers (and so appears in the host status info that is published by GT3 GRAM).

RFT


The Reliable File Transfer Service component in the GT 3.2 alpha release contains bug fixes and extended functionality. In particular, this version of Reliable File Transfer Service supports recursive directory copy between GridFTP servers that support MLSD/MLST features. The schemas of the service have been reworked which increased the scalability of service significantly. A new service instance level option has been added that turns on data channel reuse if your request consists of multiple transfers between same hosts which will further enhance performance. A new command line client has been added, which in addition to being able to submit transfer requests to service, can also serve as notification sink. This allows one to display number of transfers done/failed etc. More information can be found here.

RLS


The Replica Location Service component in the GT3.2 alpha release containsbug fixes and extended functionality. In particular, this version of theReplica Location Service supports the deployment of a hierarchy of ReplicaLocation Index (RLI) nodes. In past RLS versions, RLIs summarized mappinginformation from one or more Local Replica Catalog (LRC) nodes. In the newversion, an RLS can be configured with an arbitrary hierarchy of RLI nodes,where each RLI summarizes state information for one or more lower-level LRC and/or RLI nodes. Further information can be found in the RLS release notes.

C Bindings


The C Bindings component of the Globus Toolkit in 3.2 alpha contains a number of bug fixes. No new functionality was included in this release. Important bug fixes include fixes for gt3_gram_client library for multiple job submission, as well as a number of fixes to memory handling in that library. Also, support for Tru64 native compiler was improved.

Known Issues

  • There exists a race condition when running globusrun, see bug 1416
  • Switching from one GridFTP data channel protection level to another in the same GridFTP session does currently not work. Note that this should not impact anyone as everything still works fine if you stick to your initial protection level.
  • The WU-Gridftp server has been modified to be able to make calls to an authorization library that uses callouts to make authorization decisions. The 3.2 Alpha CAS callouts are not enabled yet. An update will be provided soon.