1. All hosts need installations of a recent version (6.17+) of csh/tcsh. There are RPMs for Red Hat/CentOS/Scientific Linux 4.x and 5.x in the software tree at /programs/i386-linux/system/RPMs. Other distributions usually have an up to date version.
2. SELinux must be disabled.
3. 64-bit hosts need the 32-bit compatibility packages installed as well as common 32-bit libraries for graphics, X11, OpenGL, etc.

yum install atk.i686 audit-libs.i686 avahi.i686 cairo.i686 cyrus-sasl-lib.i686 db4.i686 dbus-libs.i686 expat.i686 fontconfig.i686   
freetype.i686 glib2.i686 glibc.i686 gnutls.i686 gtk2.i686 libasyncns.i686 libattr.i686 libcap.i686 libcom_err.i686 libcurl.i686     
libdaemon.i686 libdrm.i686 libgcc.i686 libgcrypt.i686 libgpg-error.i686 libICE.i686 libidn.i686 libjpeg.i686 libogg.i686 libpng.i686
libselinux.i686 libSM.i686 libsndfile.i686 libssh2.i686 libstdc++.i686 libtasn1.i686 libthai.i686 libtiff.i686 libuuid.i686         
libvorbis.i686 libX11.i686 libXau.i686 libxcb.i686 libXcomposite.i686 libXcursor.i686 libXdamage.i686 libXext.i686 libXfixes.i686   
libXft.i686 libXi.i686 libXinerama.i686 libXmu.i686 libXrandr.i686 libXrender.i686 libXScrnSaver.i686 libXt.i686 libXtst.i686       
libXxf86vm.i686 mesa-dri-drivers.i686 mesa-libGL.i686 mesa-libGLU.i686 ncurses-libs.i686 openssl.i686 pango.i686 pixman.i686        
readline.i686 sqlite.i686 xcb-util.i686 zlib.i686

1. use NFS if you can.
2. use the stock X11, not the Xquartz development version on MacOSForge.
3. Portable home directories work better for some software that expect home directories to be local filesystems and case-insensitive.

1. you can create a local installation to take along with you.

http://sbgrid.org/wiki/software/localsync