Rocky 9 migration#
Note
The wICE OS update to Rocky 9 was originally planned for November 2025. We have however decided to postpone it until the performance issues with Intel Turbo Boost have been resolved (see the bottom of this page).
Once we are confident that these performance issues can be resolved, we will plan a new (short) test phase.
In the meantime, nodes where Rocky 9 has been deployed for testing purposes
will be gradually reverted to Rocky 8. The associated rocky9_pilot
Slurm reservation will eventually be removed.
We plan to update the KU Leuven Tier-2 cluster wICE to Rocky Linux 9 as the operating system. Important differences at the system level are listed below.
Packages |
Rocky Linux 8 |
Rocky Linux 9 |
|---|---|---|
kernel |
4.18.0-553.58.1 |
5.14.0-570.42.2 |
bash |
4.4.20 |
5.1.8 |
gcc |
8.5.0 |
11.5.0 |
glibc |
2.28 |
2.34 |
Centrally installed modules have already been made available for Rocky 9, starting from toolchain 2021a.
Timing#
(To be decided)
How to test#
(To be revisited)
Expected impact#
The impact of this upgrade will be small for most users. If you are only using
centrally installed modules, your module load commands will automatically
load the appropriate modules (e.g. the ones installed for Rocky 9 if you are
on a node with Rocky 9). Note that this may not apply if you are
manually modifying your module path (if in doubt, please consult
The module system on Leuven clusters).
Note
If you have been compiling your own software on Rocky 8, it is possible that this software will not run on Rocky 9. If this is the case or if you have any doubts, we recommend to recompile on a node with the new OS. When doing so, it can be convenient to use the ${VSC_OS_LOCAL} variable which describes the node’s operating system (i.e. “rocky8” or “rocky9”).
Note
Keep in mind that also Python or R package installations may involve compiling steps for extensions and so may need to be redone for Rocky 9.
Note
Conda environments created on Rocky 8 will normally continue to work on Rocky 9 (at least if the compiled components are provided by Conda packages, as is normally the case).
Known issues#
Currently the CPU cores are unable to reach the maximal (‘turbo’) frequency. Compared to nodes with Rocky 8, you may therefore see somewhat lower performance if only a few cores are active while the other cores are idling. This issue is still being investigated.