[lsst-dm-stack-users] problem installing sconsUtils on ubuntu 12.04

[Adrian Pope]

I think I finally understand something about what’s going on with the LSST DM stack install at Argonne. On some of the networks here I end up with an uncompressed sconsUtils-8.0.0.0.eupspkg file after download. The version of tar on a mac is kind enough to ignore the “z” flag for uncompressed files but the version of tar on ubuntu is not, so fail. On some other networks that file comes through still compressed and everything is fine. I don’t see this behavior with the other eupspkg files. I sent an email (contents replicated below) to the Argonne network folks to see if they can help me understand why this is happening.

So my guess is that the LSST DM stack installer is not exactly at fault. That said, is it worth considering this particular case in making the installer more robust (eg. check file type before issuing tar command) or more verbose (eg. check file type and/or checksum and exit more gracefully)?

Cheers,
Adrian

I’m seeing some mysterious behavior when I download some particular gzip files from different wireless networks at Argonne. Specifically I am comparing “ArgonneA-Auth” and “Argonne-guest” in bldg 360 (rm C-129). I download two files with the following commands:

curl -O http://sw.lsstcorp.org/eupspkg/products/scons-2.1.0+7.eupspkg
curl -O http://sw.lsstcorp.org/eupspkg/products/sconsUtils-8.0.0.0.eupspkg

When I download them over “Argonne-guest” and look at the resulting files I get the following:
$ ls -l
total 1248
-rw-r--r--  1 pope  staff  575178 Aug 21 17:01 scons-2.1.0+7.eupspkg
-rw-r--r--  1 pope  staff   60772 Aug 21 17:01 sconsUtils-8.0.0.0.eupspkg
$ file *
scons-2.1.0+7.eupspkg:      gzip compressed data, from Unix, last modified: Thu Mar 20 23:05:51 2014
sconsUtils-8.0.0.0.eupspkg: gzip compressed data, from Unix, last modified: Thu Mar 20 23:05:52 2014

When I download them over “ArgonneA-Auth” and look at the resulting files I get the following:
$ ls -l
total 1608
-rw-r--r--  1 pope  staff  575178 Aug 21 16:57 scons-2.1.0+7.eupspkg
-rw-r--r--  1 pope  staff  245760 Aug 21 16:57 sconsUtils-8.0.0.0.eupspkg
$ file *
scons-2.1.0+7.eupspkg:      gzip compressed data, from Unix, last modified: Thu Mar 20 23:05:51 2014
sconsUtils-8.0.0.0.eupspkg: POSIX tar archive (GNU)

I get the same behavior in both the base operating system on my laptop (Mavericks 10.9.4) and in an ubuntu 12.04 virtual machine running on the same laptop.

I would like to understand why one of the files ends up uncompressed over “ArgonneA-auth” and not over “Argonne-guest”. I believe this issue is preventing me from installing some software on an ubuntu workstation on a wired network in bldg 360 because the installer is expecting a compressed file and fails when presented with an uncompressed file.

Thanks,
Adrian

On Jul 28, 2014, at 6:52 PM, Kian-Tat Lim <ktl at slac.stanford.edu> wrote:

> On Mon, 2014 Jul 28 19:20:42 -0400, Robert Lupton the Good wrote:
>>> To these two questions, Adrian and I tried to look at the file, but it gets deleted at exit and there's no way to keep it around that I saw.
> 
> 	It's deleted by an atexit.register in eups/distrib/server.py
> which doesn't look avoidable :-( (and doesn't look like Mario's fault).
> 
> 	With verbose turned on, "eups distrib install" should say what
> URL it's trying to retrieve.
> 
> -- 
> Kian-Tat Lim, LSST Data Management, ktl at slac.stanford.edu