Holy Crap................

[Beerknurd]

Empty_5oul passed me in posts... I am no longer the biggest post whore.... :cry:

[Jeff]

Beer, you need to keep posting!!

You've been slacking...

[gamer007]

:lol:

Stop slacking! And start posting! :P Like crazy.

[Ototero]

Haha, but he's married now!!!!!!!

[DMMc]

Empty_5oul passed me in posts... I am no longer the biggest post whore.... :cry:

:shocked!: It’s the apocalypse!!!...It’s the apocalypse!!!...save yourselves :hiding:

[Empty_5oul]

i managed to do it without trying.

i think ogame has given me a boost.

[Beerknurd]

Between work and school, I have been really really busy..... Hopefully I'll get a second wind......

[AMDave]

"Second Wind" !?
That sounds like denial if ever I heard it ... hur hur hur
"you lik lik pella ol lik me ol pella" LOLOLOL

you put a comp lab over the garage yet?

I'm going to have to start asking you networking questions:
Which is the better plan for the home DC enthusiast; PXE or Beowulf ?
I think PXE, but I have reservatiions...

Is there a network design or loading issue with either?
Does either have a cheap / easy solution?
(I have a semi-educated guess but I'm not sure)

...oh, and btw I'm really looking for answers.
no jibing this time.
(bummer huh ?)

[Brucifer]

AMDave, get in touch with PCZ over at Free-DC as he runs and has run PXE for a long long time. He's the resident xpert on the subject over there.

:)


edit: In fact he has put up a sticky on the subject.

[AMDave]

read it a while back and posted it in my to-do list.
hence my questions re the networking.

I have seen a few simple beowulfs get up but I dont know how they compare to PXE. Given that PXE is like a blade server [ with a slow back plane ] but with a NIC for each board, I am interested about the networking challenges before planning anything. Nonetheless, I guess that PXE and Beowulf should have about the same networking loads, but I expect PXE could have more network load because each board accesses a shared HDD.

Beer is a network man, so I thought I'd throw him a curly one ;)

I wonder if there's a "wireless" beowulf out there already ?

[Beerknurd]

I personally like Beowulf causee it allows the average joe to build a supercomputer... If enough people do it than maybe we can stick it to the people at Cray and they will be forced to lower prices on their machines!!!

How many computers are we talking here... ??

Are you running all Linux boxes, cause it is recommended with Beowulf??

If you are running Windows and Linux then Beowulf would be a pain in the ass. Plus setting up MPI (Message Passing Interface) with Windows can be expensive, but with Linux it's free... "If you don't want support"

With PXE you have diskless workstations using server resources so the load on the server could bottleneck it...

I an still new at this so if some of the info I've stated makes no sense than just remember i'm still learning.....

[Ototero]

Jason, have you swallowed a tech manual?

I was very impressed :shock:

[Beerknurd]

It's amazing what you can learn in college if you pay attention.....

[AMDave]

Linux. Definitely.
as per Jason's [EOC] notes you can split a PXE into another network sub-net. I can understand the reasons for this. I'll be aiming for 100BaseT set-up.

Yep. I am settled on having a go at PXE since I won't be re-writing any code or buying similar spec. nodes. It looks like I have just enough for test set-up. I have a machine I can convert to a server, with an extra NIC and plenty of disk space. I have a door-stop I can covert to a node. What I need is another hub / router and some more cable. actually, for the test I can probably just plug the node into the server on a CAT-5 cross-over cable.

I am in no hurry. This is not going to happen tomorrow, this week or even this month. I'll pick up bits while I talk with local PC retailers about maybe getting any trade-ins they might have to give to an experiment. That'll be the hard part. I don't have the gift of the gab and several of them have tried to rip me off in the past so I bought parts elsewhere across town.

From IronBits' notes it "seems" like adding additional nodes is straight forward.
In the mean time there's software to download and prepare and plenty of reading to do.
I have more than half a dozen Linux distors sitting on my desk but "RHL Shrike" is not one of them and I'd prefer to go with a known implementation for a first time.

[AMDave]

....some time later....

Round#1 to the software.

Managed to change a DHCP setting on my server that I shouldn't have :roll:
Had to drag over a monitor, keyboard and mouse and plug them in to get back into it again.

Also ended up with multiple versions of LTSP installed (forgot to uninstall some bits of ver 3 before installing 4.1) and things were getting messy.

Decided to wipe the drive and start clean.
FC4 reinstalled.

This time going to stick with LTSP 4.1. The newer installer is a breeze and takes care of a lot of config stuff too.

That will get me back up to stage 3 again.

Learned a lot from the first time around. Feeling more confident about the next attempt.

reminder to me - I'll have to re-test the Cat5 cross-over cable plugged into the node - I think it's suss.