ICubBrain
iCubBrain is a cluster of 2 machines used by VisLab to run stable demos (the other cluster, Cortex, is used for development).
Old information can be consulted at iCubBrain server configuration/Archive.
Specifications
We purchased iCubBrain from Tetragon in June 2009. The box includes a SC808T-980 1U chassis (1U Twin size) with two twin X7DWT serverboards. Each of the two boards hosts an Intel Xeon 8-core processor (8 x E5405 @ 2.00 GHz). Each machine is an independent computer, having two hard disk drive drawers and its own power and reset buttons.
Memory: 4GB for each machine (sudo dmidecode --type 17 to see RAM speed and type).
For full system specifications, go here (PDF) or on the entry on tsunami.pt
Current setup
| machine | location | operating system | notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| icubbrain1 | left half of chassis | Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64bit | administrator account: vislab; demo account: icub |
| icubbrain2 | right half of chassis | Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64bit | administrator account: vislab; demo account: icub |
Operating system installation
Next, we will explain how we configured the left part of the server, called icubbrain1. The settings for icubbrain2 will be just about the same (unless otherwise noted, see above table), with the last octet of the IP address being 42 instead of 41.
Boot
We booted the Ubuntu Server CD from an external USB CD drive. Press the 'Del' key if you need to access the BIOS boot order.
We then had to manually confirm the usage of a 'cdrom' module within the installation (following all the default selections).
Network interface
icubbrain1 has two Gbit interfaces. First we plugged an Ethernet cable into the first one (which turns on the "1" led in the chassis front). Then, when Ubuntu asked us to choose between eth0 and eth1, we picked up eth0.
Partitions
We chose the 'Guided - use entire disk' option, which yielded the following:
| size | mountpoint | filesystem |
|---|---|---|
| 133GB | / | ext3 |
| 5GB | swap |
Other operations performed
Subversion
We have set the following parameter in /etc/subversion/config:
store-passwords = no
This implies that SVN will ask you for your password every time you do a commit. (Don't worry about changing your personal ~/.subversion/config file: the parameter is not actually set there, so the global /etc setting is used.)
Additional software
OpenCV
sudo apt-get install libcv-dev libhighgui-dev libcvaux-dev
YARP and iCub
Follow the instructions on the RobotCub software article. For compilation, do not use sudo make install but simply make (we have configured the PATH variable to find the latest compiled binaries, and we do not want two copies of the same thing on the system).
- Custom yarp2 configuration
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE Release CREATE_LIB_MATH
- Custom iCub configuration: first compile IPOPT according to the official RobotCub wiki guide (http://eris.liralab.it/wiki/Installing_IPOPT), then proceed to configuring the actual iCub repository:
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE Release ENABLE_icubmod_cartesiancontrollerclient ON ENABLE_icubmod_gazecontrollerclient ON
- iCub compilation
make make install_applications
- Final configuration
yarp namespace /icub