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Summer 2025 OS Upgrades

Summer 2025 OS Upgrades

Jul 29, 2025

Overview

Before the end of Summer 2025, BRCF POD compute and storage servers were running Ubuntu Linux version 20.04 LTS (Long Term Support), which was released in 2020 with 5 years of support/updates. As of April 2025, updates for Ubuntu 20.04 were frozen and no longer available in the standard repositories. As a result, all BRCF POD servers were migrated to a newer Ubuntu LTS release: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, which will be supported until April 2029.

All storage servers were migrated to Ubuntu 24.04 in the Spring of 2025. This had little effect on users since most storage servers have little user-relevant software installed.

Migration of POD compute servers to 24.04 was completed at the end of July 2025, with potentially more user-relevant software issues.

See below for outstanding issues.

Find your OS version

To determine which OS version a server is running, do the following in a Terminl (including RStudio Server or JupyterHub Server Terminal): lsb_release -a. On the Release: line you should  24.04.

Known outstanding issues

  • JupyterHub Server
    • TensorFlow is not yet working properly in JupyterHub (the command line version is fine)
  • scp
  • Documentation
    • We are working to update our POD Software Information to reflect globally-installed software available under Ubuntu 24.04, but it currently reflects only the 20.04 environment.

How R Studio Server and JupyterHub Server changes may affect you

All compute servers have both web-based RStudio Server and JupyterHub Server installed. A menu allowing you to select from the installed web-based applications is available by specifying any POD compute server name in a web browser; for example: https://gsafcomp01.ccbb.utexas.edu/

Also see About R and R Studio Server for information on currently supported R versions, and About Python and JupyterHub server for Python. versions.

How the compute server O/S upgrade may affect you

There are several categories of programs installed on compute servers:

  1. Programs we install globally, accessible by all users
  2. Programs you install yourself, generally accessible only by you
    1. this includes condas and venvs
  3. Docker containers you install (accessible by anyone)

These can be binaries built from source, Docker images you build or download, or in the case of Python and R/RStudio Server, add-on packages.

Globally-installed programs

If a program or R package or Python package you regularly used under Ubuntu 20.04 is missing or doesn't work in the new Ubuntu 24.04 environment, please Contact Us after trying the troubleshooting tips described in About R and R Studio Server and About Python and JupyterHub server.

Docker containers

All Docker containers installed under Ubuntu 20.04 are no longer available. You will need to re-download/re-install any Docker containers you need.

Incompatible user-installed programs

Programs you installed under Ubuntu 20.04 may no longer work.

The Ubuntu OS is installed on local hard disks on each POD compute server, so that's where system programs, system libraries, most add-on programs and add-on libraries are installed. (The exception is for large 3rd party programs or tool suites, which are built in /stor/system/opt, a directory on the shared storage server.)

If you installed 3rd party programs, however, the installation binaries are usually written somewhere under your home directory, /stor/home/<user_name>, which is on the shared storage server. These programs may refer to system libraries (or R or Python packages) that are incompatible with the Ubuntu 24.04 environment.

The steps needed to address such incompatibilities depends on the type of program and installation:

  • For programs downloaded as pre-built binaries, check the maintainer's website for a version compatible with Ubuntu 24.04.
    • or try just uninstalling/reinstalling them
  • For programs downloaded as source and built by you, move the previous binaries (often in ~/bin or ~/.local/bin), then perform a clean build from existing (or updated) source code.

Condas and Venvs

In general, condas built under 20.04 should still work under 24.04; however Python venvs may not. You will need to delete the previous venvs inside your projects, and create new ones.

If any of your venvs uses a Python version other that the now-current Python3.12 default, you will need to do the following before creating a new venv:

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