[AWIPS #AOS-548139]: Re: Cave on RHEL - more questions

Hi there,

> I've been following this thread "...Hi Gyorgyi,Have you already migrated your 
> Linux
> Computer lab from RHEL7 to RHEL9? ..."
>
> and am interested in the migration path away from Centos 7 for CAVE. Looking 
> forward
> to your Rocky 9 or 8 experiences.

Glad to see are email archives are helpful!
A quick note, that we have also been made aware of in the past few days or so, 
is that
Rocky 9 might not actually be a viable option in the future. I haven't read 
this myself
but one of our team members shared this:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/red_hat_centos_move/

> I've been running the CAVE virtual machine on Windows 10 no problem. Frankly, 
> the 
> limitations of not being able to render RGB composites is a fairly minor one. 
> I'm 
> trying to settle on using KVM and libvirt for my VM environment. Would it be 
> very
> difficult to create a qcow2 VM on the Linux CAVE? That way my other VMs 
> wouldn't have
> to content with the VMWARE workstation.

I don't think we could provide packaged VMs for you for different Virtual 
Machine 
platforms, but I do think you can simply install CAVE yourself on whatever 
platform you
choose.  Use an ISO to install CentOS7 (like this one 
http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/7/isos/x86_64/) and then follow our 
"Linux" install
instructions):
v18 - http://unidata.github.io/awips2/install/install-cave/#linux
or
v20 - http://unidata.github.io/awips2/install/install-cave-beta-v20/#linux

Let me know if that makes sense?

> I still have a longer path to getting familiar with D2D and V20 CAVE. It 
> looks to be
> quite capable. Thanks for all your work and colleagues support.

Of course!  If you're still learning, we have some great educational materials 
on our
Educational Resources page: 
http://unidata.github.io/awips2/appendix/educational-resources/

Notably, we have an online learning course called "Learn AWIPS CAVE", and we 
have a blog
series called "AWIPS Tips" that's been running for over two years now, with new 
releases
every other week!

> Do you think that running a VM with gpu pass through to an Nvidia GPU would 
> allow access
> to the RGB rendering? I'm not asking you to support that, but simply looking 
> forward to
> future environments.

Yes! I think this is exactly what's needed in order to get VMs to render RGB 
products 
properly.  We had a discussion about this very functionality with the 
developers at
VMWare Workstation Player several months ago.  They had been looking into 
adding this
capability, but didn't have much success at the time.  We might be able to 
follow up with
them sometime in the near future though... If you do come across any other 
Virtual Machine
platforms that seems to have this functionality, please let us know!

> My goal is to run CAVE in a modern up-to-date Linux Desktop Environment while 
> maintaining
> compatibility with Unidata's support

Yeah, if you're not too upset about RGBs, then a virtual machine can definitely 
be a good 
solution for this problem right now.  We do intend to support newer versions of 
RHEL OS, 
but, unfortunately, we're mostly at the mercy of Raytheon's development to 
truly guarantee
compatibility.  Although, we are doing our best to develop "ahead" of them when 
we can.

Thanks!


--Shay Carter

She/Her/Hers
AWIPS Software Engineer
UCAR - Unidata

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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: AOS-548139
Department: Support AWIPS
Priority: Normal
Status: Open
===================
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