Getting VDT up and running on Debian Squeeze

Problem description

As of 2010-03-12 there is a new openssl version in squeeze which is somewhat incompatible with the one used in Lenny. The VDT team patched their build system to get around this problem and we are now providing updated packages.

Please remember these packages are just for Debian Squeeze - currently the testing version

How to fix the problem

All these operations need to be done as root (or using sudo)!

Add these lines to you /etc/apt/sources.list file (the vdt lines might already be there):

# main repository for VDT packages for Debian
deb http://vdt.cs.wisc.edu/ligo/debian/testing lenny main
deb-src http://vdt.cs.wisc.edu/ligo/debian/testing lenny main

# repository for certificates
deb http://software.grid.iu.edu/apt/ stable main

# special repository for packages rebuilt for Debian squeeze 
deb http://n0.aei.uni-hannover.de/debian vdt-squeeze contrib
deb-src http://n0.aei.uni-hannover.de/debian vdt-squeeze contrib

Now run

aptitude update
aptitude install vdt-gsi-openssh-client osg-ca-certs
aptitude safe-upgrade

This should pull in the openssh client as well as the certificates if you have not yet have them installed. the final line should pull in the rebuilt pacakges for squeeze if you already had the packages installed. The rebuild packages have the extra tag +squeezeX where X is a number added to ensure that they have a larger version number than the standard packages from the VDT team.

In principle you should be all set up now.

How to use the VDT ssh version

Installing these packages will create symbolic links under /usr/bin, i.e. you should just be able to use gsissh out of the box (of course after ensuring that you have a valid proxy, i.e. don't forget to run grid-proxy-init)