User`s guide

IST-033576 D2.1.4
2.1 Prerequisites
BLCR consists of three kernel modules, some user-level libraries, and several
command-line executables. No kernel patching is required.
BLCR has been engineered to work with a wide range of Linux kernels:
• Many major vendor distributions of Linux. Those tested historically have
include RedHat 7.2 through 9, SuSE 9.x and 10.0, CentOS 3.1, and Fedora
Core 2 through 4.
• Many “vanilla” Linux 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels (from kernel.org) have also
been tested with several glibc versions (2.1.x through 2.4.x). According
to BLCR documentation, vanilla versions 2.4.0 though 2.4.34 and 2.6.0
through 2.6.22 all work (though 2.4.x support is only available for the x86
architecture).
• BLCR uses a set of autoconf-based feature tests to probe the kernels it builds
against. It is thus likely that a custom kernel based on one of the above
kernel sources will work with BLCR, provided that patches applied to the
kernel don’t invalidate assumptions BLCR has made.
BLCR uses assembly code to save some program state (most notably the CPU
registers). This means that the BLCR kernel modules are not portable across CPU
architectures "out of the box". Currently only x86 and x86_64 systems are fully
tested with BLCR. The 0.6.0 release is the first to include experimental support
for PowerPC64 and for ARM. The PowerPC port works for both 32- and 64-bit
application, but requires a 64-bit kernel at this time.
2.2 Installation
A fully documented html (BLCR_Admin_Guide.html) page is provided in the doc
directory of the BLCR tarball, and in appendix A.
2.3 Tutorial/Command line tools
A fully documented html (BLCR_User_Guide.html) page is provided in the doc
directory of the BLCR tarball and in appendix B. A description of all available
options for checkpoint/restart is available via the man pages once BLCR is in-
stalled.
XtreemOS–Integrated Project 6/49