Parallel Virtual File System, Version 2

Downloads

PVFS Version 2.7.1

PVFS is released as GPL/LGPLed source code in gzipped tar format.

pvfs-2.7.1.tar.gz		[Primary Site]
pvfs-2.7.1.tar.gz		[Mirror Site]

We do not release any precompiled builds (rpms, debs, etc) directly. PDSI offers relatively recent PVFS binaries for Debian unstable systems. See the PDSI website for more information.

Please see the documentation page to find information about how to build, install, configure, and use PVFS.

Previous Releases

Previous release can be downloaded here: Previous releases.

Dependencies

PVFS is easy to install, requiring only a few dependencies, which are often pre-installed on most Linux systems.

Server Deps

GCC: Any Unix OS with the GCC compiler.
Oracle Berkeley DB: The server uses Berkeley DB as its backend metadata storage. Many varieties of Unix/Linux have Berkeley DB libraries pre-installed, or have pre-built binaries that can be easily installed. The Oracle Berkeley DB website provides source releases that compile on a wide variety of platforms as well.

Linux VFS Client Deps

PVFS can be mounted in linux just like any other filesystem. We support kernel versions 2.4.x and 2.6.x. Note that almost all 2.6.x kernels are supported and have been tested, except for possibly some of the earliest versions. A kernel module for 2.4.x also exists, but is less frequently tested and is being phased out. We highly encourage users and administrators to install the PVFS client on a relatively recent 2.6.x kernel.
Kernel Headers: The PVFS kernel module must be built against the pre-configured kernel headers. The version of kernel headers must match the running kernel. Most linux distributions provide packages for installing the latest kernel headers.

Optional Dependencies

Myricom's MX: PVFS has support for myricom's high-bandwidth, low-latency networking protocol. In order to build PVFS to use MX, the MX libraries must be installed. See Myricom's MX page for further info.
Infiniband: Both Mellanox Verbs API and OpenIB are supported by PVFS.

Related Software

MPI-IO (ROMIO)

MPI-IO is the recommended interface for interacting with PVFS from a parallel application. MPI-IO support for PVFS version 2 is provided through the ROMIO package. The latest versions of ROMIO as distributed with MPICH2 already contain PVFS version 2 support by default.

Please visit the MPICH2 web site to download this software or find out more information.

pNFS with PVFS

Collaborators at CITI have designed and implemented a prototype of pNFS that exports a PVFS filesystem providing high-performance over an NFS v4 protocol. See the CITI pNFS website for further information.

Ethereal/WireShark PVFS Dissector

PVFS has a dissector plugin for Wireshark that is distributed with the default Wireshark releases. To trace PVFS messages, just grab a packet dump using your favorite packet sniffer (tcpdump, etc.), and open the resulting output file in Wireshark. The PVFS messages will be displayed in the main window.

PVFS FUSE Interface

John Chandy at the University of Connecticut has written a FUSE interface for PVFS v.2. This allows PVFS clients to access PVFS volumes from non-Linux machines, such as Mac OS X and FreeBSD. More information is available from the pvfs2fuse website.

Patches

PVFS releases have been tested for stability. We provide fixes to bugs found in the most recent release as patch sets. Each patch set can be applied to the most recent release until that release is superseded.

Date	Patch	Description	Release Target	Affects
May 11, 2007	pvfs-lk21.patch	Patch to build PVFS with linux kernel 2.6.21	2.6.3	PVFS Kernel Module

Quick Links

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions.
Fisheye: Browse the source code.
Tinderbox: Continuous Integration Testing. View the latest test runs and results.

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