NOTE: If you find yourself angry after reading this post, read this first.
This seems difficult, at first glance, but really, it’s not.
At all.
From the time you get all your hardware plugged in to the time you’re doing some massive parallel processing, depending on your needs, can be anywhere from 2 hours to 10 minutes. And this simple guide will help you get there.
Get the Hardware
Now, mind you, I’m not trying to do this as cheaply as possible, but I am trying to do this with as much bang for your buck as possible. These are the things you need to get.
PCs: Duh, kinda the barebones necessity in a cluster, and I have a recommendation: eMachines T5212. It’s got a Pentium 805 Dual core Processor with each core running at 2.66ghz, for a total of 5.32ghz per machine, and 2x1MB L2 cache, which while not stellar, is pretty respectable. It’s also got 1gb of RAM and a 200gb hard-drive, so storage problems go away pretty quickly too. There’s a lower model with half the ram and a smaller hard drive, the T5216, but I need the RAM, so I go with the T5212. At Best Buy and other stores, these run about 534.99 for just the tower. Mind you I have chosen this box for the hardware’s compatibility to the software we’ll be using in a later step.
Network Cables: You’re going to need at least one for each PC, and probably a couple more if you have an external device or PC acting as your DHCP server and/or gateway.
Network Hardware: You’re going to need a switch big enough for all your PCs to connect (or a series of small ones that you can daisy chain together). Life will also be a lot easier if you have a ONE DHCP server for all of your machines. All the machines need to be on the same IP subnet, but don’t need to be on the same network switch or in the same geographic area.
Setting Up your Hardware:
In my personal configuration, I have a small network appliance that acts as a dhcp server, router, and print server, so I use that as the base of my networking needs. I then have a series of smaller switches which have 1 (count them, 1) link total back to the DHCP server. This is important for me, so that network traffic on the cluster doesn’t bog down the rest of my home network. How else could I play Halo while factoring 100 digit non-prime numbers? This will also help your cluster have fewer jumps between nodes.
Your Software:
I strongly recommend the use of ClusterKnoppix. It’s a great tool, and is very stable. It uses the 2.4 debian kernel, and has openMosix installed and configured for auto-detect (which means nodes are essentially plug-and-play, though not really, and I’ll discuss why later). You’ll need one copy for each box, unless you choose to commit the knoppix image to the hard-drive of each machine. It’s not necessary, but it may be easier if you don’t have a stack of CDR’s at your disposal.
Booting up the Cluster:
This is probably the easiest part of the process. Place a ClusterKnoppix CD in each box, and boot it up. I can vouch that this hardware is compatible and you won’t have any issues loading, so now you’re ready to work! NOTE: If you do this with other hardware, I can’t guarantee things are going to work so swimmingly, and I am nowhere near qualified to help you trouble-shoot your hardware. If you have a DHCP server and DNS somewhere on your network, your cluster should be live to the internet, so you can pick up your code off other boxes on the network or from a CVS server somewhere out there in the intarwebs. There is a version of GCC and G++, though I can’t think of the version numbers off the top of my head (feel free to check the link on the side of this blog, I’m sure its there somewhere).
Making your Mosix Cluster a Beowulf
There’s two methods, but they essentially do the same thing. The first is to commit a knoppix image to the hard-drive of one of your boxes. There are tools for formatting and repartitioning the harddrive in the utilities menu in KDE (I think it’s GTPart that’s installed, as well as a few others). Follow the instructions from http://www.knoppix.org or from any other live-distribution site (they’re a little extensive, else I would include them here). The second is to commit an alteration image to your hard disk, and then boot knoppix from this alteration image (a new feature to Knoppix that I’ve never used, so once again, check the intarwebs).
Either method you choose, I would strongly recommend you use LAM/MPI (or openMPI if you so strongly desire the biggest and baddest). The nice thing about this setup, is that you do not need to configure each machine with lam, or configure your root node with machine lists of all the other nodes in the network. All you have to do is create multiple processes on the node that has MPI installed, and openMosix will balance the cluster. It’s truly beautiful. In order to run a process in mpi, follow these simple instructions (for lam):
bash$: lamboot
<some output here>
bash$: mpirun -np (some number of processes) <your executable name> <your arguments>
That’s it. You don’t even need to compile your binaries using the MPI compilers, assuming they don’t use the MPI libraries. If they do, use mpic++ or mpicc as you would g++ or gcc, respectively.
I’d love to hear success stories, so please, leave comments!
Big Problems, Crappy Computers 
January 9, 2007 at 8:39 pm
[…] Make sure it spells [THC] from space […]
January 10, 2007 at 4:18 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]
January 10, 2007 at 4:29 pm
A dual core 2.66 GHz doesn’t mean you get 5.32 GHz per CPU (per computer).
March 18, 2012 at 3:17 am
You can have a series of dual Xeon motherboards with 30gb of RAM about 10 and you have a bad ass machine coupled with a windows or Linux kernel and your flyin it also wouldn’t hurt if you had a couple of nvidia quatro 6000 graphics cards either
January 10, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I recently had a bad experience with the T5212, and bought a PC that was slightly faster and had bigger hard drives that Compaq puts out – also available at Best Buy (I blogged about the issue (click on my name) if you care, but it had to do with BIOS problems while installing Virtual PC.). It cost me $30 more when I return the Emachine box. And I think he said “5.32ghz per machine” – which is basically a performance indicator you can use to compare how many instruction cycles you’ll get out of the PC.
January 10, 2007 at 4:50 pm
“for a total of 5.32ghz per machine”
I stopped reading after that….
January 10, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Interesting, I shall scavenge the streets for some trusty P2s.
January 10, 2007 at 5:17 pm
I used to work at Best Buy on the Geek Squad and often times I had to deal with returns when Customer Service felt that dealing with customers was not the way to go. As a result I have definite mistrust of EMachines becuase they break. About 1 out of 4 or 5 EMachines is broken out of the box and even more will break within a year. They’re not good machines. DO NOT BUY AN EMACHINE! The motherboard has a tendency to fry incredibly fast, too.
January 10, 2007 at 5:17 pm
I used a small beowulf cluster a fellow computer science major built in college to run some openMPI stuff. Ah that “mpirun -np” brought back good memories! I think we had about 6 or 7 Duron 700s running in the cluster. I ran some sweet n-bodies simulations. Another fun thing to do is Povray. There’s a version of that you can run on a cluster as well! I can’t remember what it is right now though
January 10, 2007 at 5:20 pm
@Jim
I kept on reading, cause I wanted to know what software he used… But yah, anyone who says “for a total of 5.32ghz per machine” obviously isn’t too bright.
January 10, 2007 at 5:28 pm
i assume that this works for custom applications that you have written. what about commercial applications? say i wanted to transcode a bunch of video with some off the shelf video transcoding product. would that be possible with this cluster?
January 10, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Something I’d like to clear (P.S., I wrote this article), is the statement (“5.32ghz per computer”)…. I understand you don’t actually get 5.32ghz per computer on any single thread. The nice thing about a supercomputing cluster is that the processing power scales (almost) linearly per core, assuming you have enough threads to occupy each core.
January 10, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Don’t worry, dude – some of us understood what you meant – you were just trying to give an overall available clock cycles that we could use as a metric for comparison. Others were just being elitist nit wads.
January 10, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Your view on America is a poor one, I am currently an American High School student and I have successfully created a cluster using FC 2. So keep your American comments to yourself, and keep your eyes on a tech goal.
January 10, 2007 at 6:17 pm
The Mac OS (OS X) has XGRID built in, allowing you to do this from the get-go with any OS X Mac. Given that the base Mac Mini is $599, comes with 512m of memory, 80g hard disk and a core 2 Duo chip and the load balanced clustering is build into the OS, would this not work as well or better, especially given the small size of a mac mini?
Apple describes XGRID as follows: “Now any individual or workgroup can quickly build a low-cost supercomputer. Introducing Xgrid, the first distributed computing architecture to be built into a desktop or server operating system. With Xgrid, scientists, animators and digital content creators can run a single job across multiple computers at once — without ever rewriting a single line of code.”
You can find out about it at: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/xgrid.html
An obvious benefit to this approach is that, needless to say, all the hardware is fully compatable! If your ap can be recompiled to run on an intel mac, then you would be golden.
January 10, 2007 at 6:37 pm
enjoy this greatly.now I know what to do and how to put the server i’m build. Thanks alot.Norris
January 10, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Actually Supercomputing does NOT scale linearly per core. It’s a fact.
January 10, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Comments are the bane of society.
January 10, 2007 at 7:35 pm
When you say that this is load balancing, do you have to submit to a queue, or do the jobs automatically get shuffled out to the right places?
In other words, if I log into node1, and type:
% ./a.out &
% ./a.out %
% ./a.out %
% ./a.out %
are all of these jobs running on node1, or do they get farmed out to nodes 2-4 as well?
January 10, 2007 at 7:55 pm
about the 5.32ghz per machine:
when you read the article carefully, you will see there is no mistake at all,
If you consider the ‘ticking clock analogy’: two cores ticking along at 2.66*1024³ ticks per second actually tick 5.32*1024³ times a second…
He did not speak about the performance
January 10, 2007 at 8:05 pm
In response to Rick:
The processes will be balanced across the cluster, should there be a need for it. For example, if you have 4 single core boxes and 4 processes that are each using a significant amount of resources (basically just running for a long time), then they will transparently be migrated across the cluster, though all controls to the process (kill, killall, etc.) will still have to eminate from the node you started them on.
To answer your question directly, yes, they’ll migrate themselves.
January 10, 2007 at 9:01 pm
On the eMachines comment: At the moment, I’m working on one of those. Heh, the boss’s wife is determined that there’s nothing wrong with it because it’s not very old. Bull!
The board will last a while…if you get a decent power supply. All that ever burnt out on this board is the built-in Ethernet. An aftermarket power supply, 100BaseTX Ethernet card, a 3rd-party floppy drive, and extra fans, and that sumbitch is ready to go! *wink*
January 10, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Piro said: “Supercomputing does NOT scale linearly per core.”
It depends on whether the application requires much interprocess communication. There are a number of embarrassingly parallel (low to no IPC) problems which scale almost linearly, the ‘almost’ being the overhead in job setup and teardown.
January 10, 2007 at 9:16 pm
[…] you have lying around, or pick up some cheap economy PCs and turn it into a thread-ravaging monster.read more | digg […]
January 10, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Wheel Says:
January 10th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
I used to work at Best Buy on the Geek Squad
You just lost all credibility.
January 11, 2007 at 12:52 am
This mights sound like a dumb question to some of you, but after I get a cluster up and running, would it be possible to install a copy of XP or Windows Server 2003?
I suppose I could do it using VMware, if VMware can be installed on a cluster? That I do not know.
If VMware can be installed on a cluster, I could do an install of XP/Server 2k3 on one of my existing windows boxes and move it over to the cluster.
January 11, 2007 at 12:54 am
Doing the install on top of VMware, that is.
January 11, 2007 at 1:37 am
http://www.flashmobcomputing.org/
This group made a flash mob super computer just by taking normal computers and useing a LiveCD of linux
January 11, 2007 at 1:38 am
[…] read more | digg story […]
January 11, 2007 at 3:29 am
I was just going to use some old PCs that were thrown away.
Fun and games -high tech
January 11, 2007 at 8:16 am
I sold a Cray supercomputer on ebay about six or seven years ago, not a bad place to start when building one!
KevinD
fuelmyblog.com
(Take a peak and add your blog free)
January 11, 2007 at 6:49 pm
dear Alan
Shut up about mac’s. Apple sucks and so does iPod. apple and their monopoly. apple sucks, OS X is so simple, only iddiots use it. and its cartooney =(
January 11, 2007 at 11:20 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]
January 12, 2007 at 2:54 am
[…] cheap economy PCs and turn it into a thread-ravaging monster. X Men funny im juggernaut bitchvideoread more | digg story No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. […]
January 12, 2007 at 6:42 am
what was your clusterKnoppix Version. 3.6 ???
I had tried with CHAOS on 2.4.x. It has an option for 2.6.x. and ran prettY well.
Have ya heard of ROCKS, check mine
http://vipinsagar.net/2006/07/19/rocks-clustering-a-review/
January 12, 2007 at 8:44 pm
[…] recently came across this and it reminded me of my own ambitions to create a cluster of some kind. However, what he has done […]
January 15, 2007 at 12:29 pm
…eMachines, i recently found out thru some mediocre online research, have a prevalence of powers supply issues, usually resulting in PSU, mobo, and cpu burn-out within 12 months of use, +/- a couple months…other than that, most users/owners seemed satisfied…sigh…lol…
…short of the, IMHO, less-than-accurate field engineers math on the core/clock/processing jumble, the rest of your treatise is interesting and worth, at least, a turn of the hand at…i’ve got some old junk lying around, pIII and II’s…i’ll give this a try…and be quite pleased with the results, too…
…thanks for the old-school computer hobbyist/enthusiast, erm, /enthusiasm/…lol…
…peace…
doc
February 11, 2007 at 6:01 am
Dear chaser:
Actually Apples don’t suck. Funny how Microsoft decided to go with the “cartooney” look and OS X feel. Actually a very poor job at copying it. So why would a smart person like you want to use something so complicated then? If it wasn’t for Apple you wouldn’t have windoze today or the mouse! You’d be on DOS version 25! I’ve been on both sides of the fence and thus switched. Seems to me those who choose OS X are the smart ones if it’s “so simple”.
Oh sorry that the zune can’t keep up with the ipod. The only reason they have a brown one is because it is a piece of CRAP!!!
August 27, 2009 at 9:41 pm
from memory my first computer was commodore vic 20, then a amiga500 which had a windows enviroment, the amiga like apple also used a motorola cpu.
my question is how much earlier than the amiga500 did apple have windows?
October 21, 2009 at 6:56 am
I think the first Apple to have a windowing-type environment was the Lisa, released in 1983. That puts Apple quite a bit ahead of the amiga500 released in 1987.
Although Xerox, if I am not mistaken, released the firt OS with a GUI in 1981 on their Xerox Star 8010… but perhaps I am wrong.
November 21, 2010 at 11:18 am
Don’t forget the Arti ST computers. Atari, Amiga, Apple and Microsoft borrowed from Xerox’s idea that was being scraped by them. Watch “Pirates Of Silicon Valley (1999)”. Unfortunatly the movie omits mention of Atari and Amiga.
Anyways, back to the real topic hear before all the system bashing. 🙂
February 13, 2007 at 10:54 am
Bush goes ballistic about other countries being evil and dangerous, because they have weapons of mass destruction. But, he insists on building up even a more deadly supply of nuclear arms right here in the US. What do you think? Is killing thousands of innocent civilians okay when you are doing a little government makeover?
Our country is in debt until forever, we don’t have jobs, and we live in fear. We have invaded a country and been responsible for thousands of deaths.
We have lost friends and influenced no one. No wonder most of the world thinks we suck. Thanks to what george bush has done to our country during the past three years, we do!
February 13, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Accommodations offers, ski offers, photos, travel maps, travel tips, monasteries and touristic objectives.
March 12, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Sorry, but if you aren’t using a Mac as a personal computer or single server, Macs DO suck.
I’ve built a Mac OSX cluster before, using XServes, and it was the worst piece of shit I’ve ever built. The ‘hpc’ tech they sent out to help with the install didn’t know what he was doing, and wasted two solid days of my time. They did such a horrific job that my group all got free ipods as restitution.
I ended up hacking together my own scripts to automate provisioning, etc, and in the end, the entire thing ended up being a hand-install, per-node headache.
Second, why the hell would anyone want to run windows on a knoppix-based beowulf cluster? Damn.
Anywho – if yer gonna build a cluster, do it right – use linux.
March 12, 2007 at 7:53 pm
I would also like to add that the XGrid bullshit that Apple ships to try and fake grid/clustering is also the worst piece of shit I’ve ever seen.
their entire setup is one big tonka toy.
March 13, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Now since I have accumulated old computers people have abandoned after repairing computers, and have a variety of Intel P2,p3 and AMD Athlon 700’s and Athlon XP +2400 and Athlon XP +3200. Now can I stick with the same brand of processor and different speeds, or does it have to be the same mb/proc. brand or can it vary? Thank you.
March 15, 2007 at 12:06 am
Well I guess that the brands and speed of mobo’s and proc. can be different according to the stone soup article I read.
So if this is great for solving big math problems is it good for video games? If it is, what is keeping me away from using this implementation for my customers I encounter that have old turd computers just lying around? Seems to me that would be a nice advantage to do this for video games, or use it as a video game server. Or is this idea just for scientific horse crap only?
April 8, 2007 at 6:49 am
Video games require real time input and output. Math problems will generally still be solved if they take 2 hours or 2 weeks. Also, video games depends very much on the video card, which I assume isn’t being clustered.
April 8, 2007 at 5:10 pm
I’m with RobotGus here. Can the cluster handel not just games but also the over all load of day-to-day. For example. Video converting, application running, etc.
I’m also want to set one up using the ClusterKnoppix cd. I’m going to try to run it on my home network via ethr100 and 802.11g. to see if it is stable to run as a single computer. just not a math cruncher.
Has anyone ever done this, that would like to help out via notes or the problems they head?
April 12, 2007 at 5:59 pm
im considering building a small cluster probably comprising 3 or 4 fairly good spec pcs to hopefully achieve low latency audio. i already use linux for this anyway.
Granted audio processing needs realtime computing but if the computer can perform more instructions per second, presumably it will be able to process more audio samples per second, resulting in a lower latency. at least thats how i see it.
Would you be able to slap it all together, install the necessary software to handle the parallel processing and use the cluster as you would a normal desktop system, with the programs you normally run making use of the increased computational power? or do you have to write/compile your own specialised programs as mentioned on a few websites ive seen.
any help would be great.nothing ive read on the net has been very enlightening.
cheers.
June 14, 2007 at 11:44 am
Accommodations offers, ski offers, photos, travel maps, travel tips, monasteries and touristic objectives.
July 17, 2007 at 5:17 am
Nice Blog.
Im currently running three old systems in a cluster. 784mhz coppermine with 1.5gig, amd k62 375mhz 192meg, and a 500mhz 390 meg. Ive been dabbling with this set up for about two weeks now, and i must say its very fast. The only truly parallel programs Ive tested have been POvRay, and John.
But the openMosixmon make migrating applications a breeze. I cannot run frozen bubble with all three systems, but I can migrate all of my other applications to other nodes thus making frozen bubble a little faster. Im using it as my main desktop for awhile. Ive installed it to the coppermine system with the following command :
su
knoppix-installer, which is the same way that ive been installer knoppix for the past few distros. Oh yeah, Im talkinmg about Cluster-Knoppix. I think I like PK better, mainly because of the PK message board. Anyway, im just sitting here looking at this old 133mhz PI I think I might just add this one to the Cluster…. I need a bigger switch 🙂
I only have one spot left.
Side note:
PK has support for my Bcml5 wifi, the only reason I like CK better was the fact that it set up and browes the net faster. PLPus I did not want the lappy in the insecure viro of a cluster.
July 26, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Article Submitter Software
Article Submitter Software Program
July 26, 2007 at 2:49 pm
New Article Submitter Software
New Article Submitter Software Program
July 29, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Keyboard
yeah thats what I ment, i didnt remember the spelling but i did remember the meaning of the Mouse
August 3, 2007 at 11:24 am
all the ps2 games
Really nice site you have here. Ive been reading for a while but this post made me want to say 2 thumbs up. Keep up the great work.
August 3, 2007 at 11:45 am
how do i remove spyware
Really nice site you have here. Ive been reading for a while but this post made me want to say 2 thumbs up. Keep up the great work.
August 3, 2007 at 12:00 pm
psp game download
Aww… I just found this blog too! Well best of luck with the projects.I’m thinking about doing the same thing very soon.
August 4, 2007 at 12:15 am
Acting Tips
Interesting article, Thanks for sharing.
August 8, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Funniest Videos In One Place
Funniest Videos In One Place
August 8, 2007 at 10:37 pm
baum
baum.pl
August 9, 2007 at 1:44 am
1962 Corvette for Sale
Chevy Corvettes for Sale
August 9, 2007 at 3:47 am
Used Corvettes for Sale
Chevy Corvette for Sale
August 9, 2007 at 10:12 am
ϫ
ϫ
August 11, 2007 at 7:05 pm
100% Free Lifetime Webcams Live Sex
100% Free Lifetime Webcams Live Sex
August 11, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Degree Junction – College Degree Finder
Degree Junction – College Degree Finder
August 18, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Killer Transformers
Transformers info
August 23, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Bookmark to travel
Bookmark to travel
August 31, 2007 at 1:12 pm
[…] we would keep getting errors setting it up. I went back and did some more research, and found these instructions, which were to just boot from the CDs and they would see each other as long as they were assigned […]
August 31, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Nice article. I do recommend PK and CK to any beginner so he/she can get a feel for parallel environments. I would say though from a programmer’s point of view, that it’s not quite as easy as it sounds. Most programs are not ready for parallel computing. Large datasets for instance, have to be broken up by separate processes and crunched simultaneously. A data crunching program (even audio/video rendering) won’t scale just because you execute it in a parallel environment. MPI programs (LAM, etc) require MPI commands that look for the number of processors and split up jobs accordingly – IN THE CODE. Also, your main() function has to be set up to work on its portion of the data, instead of the entire set. There’s an awesome example of data set splitting in Linux Journal by a guy named Mike Hore, although the example code published does not actually work. It renders a huge image using matrix border detection and prints the borders-only image to a new file. [reply to this post if you’d like some working examples].
If you’re just looking to speed up games, they may scale well on multiple processors, they may not. It depends on the degree of multi-threading used.
CK and PK Live CD’s are not practical in real
heavy crunching environments because you kill all the RAM needed for thinking by having a memory-resident kernel. I’ve done a bunch of benchmarks to this end. PK and CK are cool ways to amaze your friends though. If you have the hardware (or even a school computer lab) set up time is about 10 minutes! Hope this was helpful.
-Bryan
October 8, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Join Your Friends At Yuwie
I really like what you have posted there. Thats was really somethig to read about. Cheers!!!
October 13, 2007 at 3:06 am
Heizhie
Heizhie
October 28, 2007 at 5:36 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]
November 30, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Automotive Audio Equipment
Buy automotive audio at low prices.
December 7, 2007 at 4:19 pm
sexy lingerie babes
relevant information from this website
January 21, 2008 at 1:55 am
FreePoolQuotes.com Expands Swimming Pool Builder
FreePoolQuotes.com connects homeowners with reliable, licensed and insured Texas pool contractors. Within 24 hours after filling out a quote request,
February 25, 2008 at 12:00 am
[…] https://clusterfudge.wordpress.com/2007/01/09/building-your-own-load-balancing-beowulf-cluster-from-e… […]
March 1, 2008 at 5:48 pm
pc satellite tv
Limneke
June 19, 2008 at 5:37 pm
HELP
Thx for the nice introduction to clustering.I have been trying to understand how it can be done and what to expect in the end.Though easy to understand compared to what I read somewhere else, I think the article is pretty short and not so encouraging for a layman like me to try it.Can anyone suggest a guide to clustering using cknoppix or kknoppix for someone with a basic computer skill?I have three laptops which would increase my productivity so much if I can make them work together.
July 31, 2008 at 9:52 am
Guys,
Parallel processing is not really as easy it sounds here. b-yondd touches on the fact that data partitioning is required so that each thread knows what portion of data it is required to process. In shared memory systems this is not too much of a problem as long as your interconnects are low-latency (and your memory is fast – data on disk can cause a real bottleneck). In a distributed memory system the data partitioning logic (and in some cases the distribution of the partitioned data) can be slower than the process run time would have been in serial!
Data partitioning is just one issue. You must also partition your algorithms into discrete parts that can either run in parallel or are serially dependent (this is known as granularity). Amdahls law defines the relationship between the granularity of an algorithm and the expected speed up due to parallelisation.
I work with complex spatio-temporal modeling problems and am trying to find ways to implement adaptive parallelisation techniques for data and processes in a distributed and heterogeneous (e.g. Windows, Linux, Solaris etc) compute environment of around 2000+ nodes. I want people to be able to submit problems to the compute cloud on-demand. If it were as simple as MPI on a homogeneous cluster I’d be greatly relieved.
Good article though!
– Over.
August 14, 2008 at 2:20 am
Hey –
I’m just a nerdy kid with that’s trying to build a cluster out of 20 or so piles of junk i’ve got lying around, but reading all of this has made me start to think I should’ve dedicated the last 7 years of my life to learning linux instead of windows. Does anyone know where I can find a beginner’s guide to building a cluster or something? Maybe a good linux guide? I’ve tried things like the freebsd handbook, but I ended up spending 6 hours straight trying to get KDE to initialize, and when it did I twitched my little finger and somehow messed freeBSD up so bad that I had to start all over again. I mean, I know DOS, but UNIX is on a whole different planet.
And, by the way – One thing i’ve found in common with all the mac users that are into the ‘super-easy-let-the-computer-do-everything-for-you’ kind of stuff – they all drive VW bugs, and they all have a lisp. ;)JK
August 24, 2008 at 6:44 am
[…] read more | digg story Posted by lucile88 Filed in Uncategorized […]
August 24, 2008 at 12:43 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]
August 25, 2008 at 4:03 pm
[…] read more | digg story […]
November 23, 2008 at 11:13 am
Help with using knoppix cluster can be read here :
http://www.firewall.cx/linux-openmosix-using-clusterknoppix.php
February 6, 2009 at 6:06 pm
i know im not the enemey just a victim of society 2000 ford mustang convertable top britax car seat dream catcher earrings dressy gaucho pants outfit with heels pictures of outfits
August 4, 2009 at 6:02 am
hm. good one 🙂
December 3, 2009 at 3:05 am
m considering building a small cluster probably comprising 3 or 4 fairly good spec pcs to hopefully achieve low latency audio. i already use linux for this anyway.
Granted audio processing needs realtime computing but if the computer can perform more instructions per second, presumably it will be able to process more audio samples per second, resulting in a lower latency. at least thats how i see it.
Would you be able to slap it all together, install the necessary software to handle the parallel processing and use the cluster as you would a normal desktop system, with the programs you normally run making use of the increased computational power? or do you have to write/compile your own specialised programs as mentioned on a few websites ive seen.
any help would be great.nothing ive read on the net has been very enlightening.
^^^^ that is exactly what i want to know too.
March 8, 2010 at 9:04 am
Very nice tutorial.
Don’t listen to those idiots who do not understand the concept of parallel computing (i.e. those who complain about 5.32ghz per machine). They are just jealous. And these guys want to build a cluster, LOL!
You wrote you are using LAM/MPI on the root note and then use openMosix to balance the cluster. I agree that this is an elegant solution.
However, my concern is that this might somehow slow down the cluster. By ‘slow down’ I mean the performance relative to using LAM/MPI on every machine and configuring the root node with machine lists of all the other nodes.
March 11, 2010 at 10:18 am
National Car Database promises to be one of the leading websites for those searching for their next car. Advertise your car for free, whether you are selling a Ferrari or a Fiesta we can help.
National Car Database
April 29, 2010 at 7:45 am
A good number of for the well-written content. I am clearly at career in the moment! So i really want to go off without the need of reading all I’d like. But I’ve added your interweb to my RSS feed in order that I can bring my time to go like a website.
May 17, 2010 at 1:58 am
I still can’t tell if this allows me to run XP and all the progs that run on XP, using this cluster idea. Everything I am reading seems to indicate that to do this you need to run Linux. Can Linux run my Music and Video editing software? Photoshop? Etc?
In short, I want to keep running xp, but on a cluster of older puters so I can get some use out of them and faster render times.
December 3, 2011 at 8:32 am
u can use linux and run xp in a vertual box inside of linux
June 15, 2010 at 11:01 am
Hi All,
I would like to add couple of points here … Now most of the cars has chip system to facilitate the scanning of the car and which gives better results than before .. I have come across cars with chip system recently in http://cars.trovit.co.in . why don’t you check it ?
Thanks guys…
June 29, 2010 at 12:10 am
“for a total of 5.32ghz per machine”, WTF?!
August 24, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Yeah, but he’s talking about how the code is actualy written within programs, it’s called concurrent programming matey. Research ‘Threads and Processes’ for more info.
The code will create seperate ‘Processes’.
So say you had two new processes being created, these could be done by the two different cores, therefore it would be effectively 5.32GHz.
Ya digg?
December 3, 2010 at 7:04 pm
when it comes to video games, i enjoy playing those that have very nice graphics and story like Plantz and Zombies *.*
February 11, 2011 at 2:34 pm
I am not real wonderful with English but I line up this real leisurely to translate.
December 3, 2011 at 8:28 am
5.32 ghs is the total combined clock speed of the cpu cores so he is right about it shut up about it
April 23, 2013 at 12:47 am
You can also follow the popular banana diet, which entails
eating a raw banana and drinking room temperature water for breakfast.
o Other important areas for weight loss like exercise and
psychological factors are not endorsed in this program.
Most healthy programs you can find online or through your local health stores are boring and lack the magic to keep you motivated all throughout,
thus you do not end up achieving your goal.
June 29, 2013 at 4:36 am
I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own weblog and was curious what all is needed to get setup? I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost a
pretty penny? I’m not very web savvy so I’m not
100% sure. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks
June 29, 2013 at 10:40 pm
We are a group of volunteers and starting a new scheme in our community.
Your web site provided us with valuable information to work on.
You have done an impressive job and our entire community will be grateful to you.
July 1, 2013 at 7:28 am
Hi! I could have sworn I’ve been to this site before but after checking through some of the post I realized it’s new to me.
Anyways, I’m definitely happy I found it and I’ll be book-marking and checking back frequently!
July 15, 2013 at 9:43 pm
What’s up it’s me, I am also visiting this web page on a regular basis, this web
page is actually pleasant and the visitors are
really sharing nice thoughts.
August 2, 2013 at 3:11 pm
Very energetic article, I enjoyed that bit. Will there be a part
2?
September 23, 2013 at 10:41 am
I have been surfing onlikne more than 4 hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours.
It’s pretty worth enough for me. Personally, if all web owners and
bloggers made good content as you did, the internet will be much more useful than ever before.|
I could not refrain from commenting. Very well written!|
I’ll right away clutch your rss feed as I can’t find your email subscription hyperlink or newsletter service.
Do you have any? Please allow me recognize in order that I may just subscribe.
Thanks.|
It’s the brst time to make some plans for the future and it’s time to be happy.
I’ve read this post and if I could I wish to suggest you some interesting things or advice.
Peryaps you could write next articles referring to this article.
I wamt to read more things about it!|
It is perfect time to make a few plahs for the future and it’s time to be
happy. I’ve read this post and iff I may I deire to recommend you some attention-grabbing issues or tips.
Maybe you could write subsequent articles referring
to this article. I wish tto read even more things approximately it!|
I have been surfing on-line greater than 3 hours as
of late, yyet I never found any interesting article
like yours. It’s lovely price enough for me. Personally, if all site owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the internet
will be a lot more helpful than ever before.|
Ahaa, its nice discussion concerning this article at
this place at this webpage, I have read all that, so
at this time me also commenting here.|
I am sure this post has touched all the internet visitors, its really
really good paragraph on building up new website.|
Wow, this post is good, my sister is analyzing these things, therefore I am going to tell her.|
bookmarked!!, I love your blog!|
Way cool! Some extremely valid points! I appreciate you penning this
post and the rest of the website is really good.|
Hi, I do think this is an excellent web site.
I stumbledupon it 😉 I may come back yet again since i have book-marked it.
Money and freedom is the best way to change, may you
be rich and continue to help others.|
Woah! I’m really digging the template/theme of this blog.
It’s simple, yet effective. A lot of times it’s very difficult to
get that “perfect balance” between user friendliness and visual appeal.
I must say you have done a awesome job with this. In addition, tthe blog loads very quick ffor
me onn Internet explorer. Excellent Blog!|
These are truly wonderful ideas in regarding blogging. You have
touched sopme good points here. Any way keep up wrinting.|
I enjoy what you guys tend to be up too. Such clever
work and coverage! Keep up the awesome works guys I’ve you guys to
my personal blogroll.|
Hi! Someone in my Myspace group shared this website with us so I came to check it out.
I’m definitely enjoying the information. I’m book-marking and will be tweeting this to my followers!
Great blog and fantastic design and style.|
I enjoy what you guys are up too. This kind of clever work and
exposure! Keep up the awesome works guys I’ve included you guys to my personal blogroll.|
Hi there would you mind sharing which blog platform you’re working with?
I’m looking to start my oown blog soon but I’m having a difficult time choosing between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal.
The reason I ask is because your layout seems different
then most blogs and I’m looking for something unique.
P.S My apologies for bing off-topic but I had to
ask!|
Hi there would yoou mind letting me know which hosting company you’re working
with? I’ve loaded your blog in 3 different web browsers and I must say this blog loads a lot faster then most.
Can you suggest a good hosting provider at a honest price?
Thank you, I appreciate it!|
I love it when folks come together aand sbare thoughts.
Great site, continue thhe good work!|
Thank you for the auspicious writeup. It in fact waas a amusement account it.
Look advanced to far addded agreeable from you!
However, how can we communicate?|
Hello just wanted to give yoou a quuick heads up. The ext in your article seem to be running off thhe screen in Chrome.
I’m not sure if this is a formatting issue or something to do with browser compatibility but I thought I’d post to let you know.
The design look grreat though! Hope you get the issue fixedd soon.
Thanks|
This is a topic that’s near to my heart… Take care! Where are
your contact details though?|
It’s very easy to find out any topic oon web as compared to books, as I found thiis post at this site.|
Does your blog have a contact page? I’m having a tough time locating it but, I’d like to shoot
you an email. I’ve got some suggestions for your blog you might be interested in hearing.
Either way, great blog and I look forward
to seeing it develop over time.|
Hi! I’ve been following your website forr a long time now and finally got the bravery to goo ahead
and give you a shout out from Lubbock Texas! Just wanted to mention keep up the excellent work!|
Greetinvs from Carolina! I’m bored at work so I decided to browse your blog on my iphone during lunch break.
I really like the info you present here and can’t wait to take a look wheen I get home.
I’m amazed at how quick your blog loaded on my cell phone ..
I’m nnot even sing WIFI, just 3G .. Anyhow, excellent blog!|
Its like you read my thoughts! You seem to grasp a
lot approximately this, such as you wrote the e
book in it or something. I beliedve that you just can do
with some p.c. too foorce the message home a bit, but other than that, this is fantastic blog.
An excellent read. I wilkl definitely be back.|
I visited various web sites exccept the audio quality for
audio songs current at this web page is actually marvelous.|
Hello, i read your blog from time to time and i own a similar one and i was just wondering if you get a
lot of spam responses? If so how do you stop
it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much lately it’s
driving me insane so any support is very much appreciated.|
Greetings! Very useful advice within this article!
It is the little changes which will make the largest changes.
Thanks for sharing!|
I absolutely love your blog.. Pleasant colors & theme.
Did you make this web site yourself? Please reply back as I’m wanting too
create my own site and would like to know where you got this from or exactly what the theme is called.
Thank you!|
Hi there! This article could not be written much better!
Looking at this article reminds me of my previous roommate!
He continually kept talking about this.I most certainly will send this information
to him. Pretty sure he’ll have a very good read. Thank you for sharing!|
Amazing! This blog looks just like my old one! It’s on
a totally different topic but it hass pretty muchh the same page layout and design.
Great choice of colors!|
There is certainly a great deal to find outt about this issue.
I like all of the points you have made.|
You’ve made some really good points there. I checked on the internet for additional information about the
issue and found most individuals will go along with your views on
this site.|
Hi there, I log on to your new stuff regularly. Your humoristic style is awesome, keep up the good work!|
I just couldn’t leave your webb site before suggesting that I actually loved the sandard into an indigidual provide in
your visitors? Is going to be again regularly to
investigate cross-check new posts|
I wanted to thank you for this wonderful read!! I definitely loved
every lttle bit of it.I have got you boiokmarked to
check outt new things you post…|
Hi there, just wanted too tell you, I liked this post.
It was practical. Keep on posting!|
I drop a leave a response each time I like a post on a blog or if I have something to valuable to contribute to the
conversation. It is triggered by the fire displayed in
the artcle I looked at. And on this post Buillding your own Load Balancing Beowulf Cluster
from Economy PCs | Big Problems, Crappy Computers.
I wass moved enough to drop a thought 🙂 I actually ddo have a couple of questions for
you iff it’s allright. Could it be simply me or does
it look like like some of these comments appear like
left by brain dead people? 😛 And, if you are
writing on other places, I’d like to folkow you.
Could youu list the complete urls of your communal pages like your twitter feed, Facebook page
or lknkedin profile?|
Hi there, I enjnoy reading all of your article
post. I liie to write a little comment tto support you.|
I constantly spent my half an hour to read this weblog’s posts all the time along with a cup of coffee.|
I constantly emailed this website post page to all
my contacts, as if like to read it after that my contacts will too.|
My developer is trying to persuade me to move to .net
from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the expenses.
But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using Movable-type
on numerous websites for about a year and am worried about switching to another platform.
I have heard good things about blogengine.net.
Is there a way I can transfer all my wordpress content
into it? Any help would be really appreciated!|
Howdy! I could have sworn I’ve been too your blog before but after goihg through many of the posts I realized it’s new to me.
Anyways, I’m certainly delighted I found it and I’ll be bookmarking it
and checking back often!|
Great article! That is the type of info that should be
shared around the net. Disgrace on Google for now not positioning this publish upper!
Come on over and talk over with my site . Thank you =)|
Heya i’m for the first time here. I came across this board and I find It truly useful &
it helped me out a lot. I hope too give something back
and aid others like you aided me.|
Howdy, There’s no doubt that your blog might be having browser compatibility
issues. When I take a look at your website in Safari, it looks fine however, when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some overlapping issues.
I just wanted to give you a quick heads up! Apart from that, wonderful website!|
Someone essentially help to make critically posts I would state.
That is the first time I frequented your web page and up to now?
I amazed with the research you made to create this particular post incredible.
Excellent task!|
Heya i’m for the first time here. I came across this board and I find It redally useful & it helped me out a lot.
I hope to provide something again and aiid others such as you aided me.|
Hello! I just wish to offer yoou a big thumbs up for your great
info you have got here on this post. I’ll be returning to your site for more soon.|
I all the time used to read paragraph in news papers but now as I am
a user of net thus from now I am using net for content,
thanks to web.|
Your means of explaining everything in this paragraph is really pleasant, every one be able to without difficulty be aware of it, Thanks a
lot.|
Hello there, I discovered your website by way of Google at the
same time as searching for a similar matter, your site got here up,
it seems great. I’ve bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.
Hi there, just turned into aware of your weblog via Google, and found that it is
really informative. I am gonna be careful for brussels.
I will be grateful if you hapopen to continue this iin future.
Numerous other folkks will be benefited from your writing.
Cheers!|
I am curious to find out what blog system you’re working with?
I’m having some minor security problems with my latest blog
and I’d like to find something more risk-free. Do you have any recommendations?|
I’m really impressed with your writing skills and also with the layokut on your blog.
Is this a paid theme or ddid you modify it yourself? Either way keep up the excellent quality writing,
it’s rare to see a nice blog like this one nowadays.|
I am really impressed along with your writing talents as smartly as
with the format on your weblog. Is this a paid subject matter or did
you customize it yourself? Anyway stay up the nice quality
writing, it’s rare to peer a nice blog like this one
these days..|
Hello, Neat post. There is ann issue with youir site in webb explorer, might check this?
IE nonetheless iis the market chief and a large part of folks will pass over your excelent writing due to this problem.|
I’m not sure where you are getting your info, but
great topic. I needs to spend some time learning more or understanding
more. Thanks for fantastic info I was looking for this information for my mission.|
Hello, i think that i saw you visited my website thus i came to “return the favor”.I
am attempting to find things to enhance my
site!I suppose its ok to use some of your ideas!!
\
June 22, 2014 at 8:30 am
Quality content is the crucial to invite the
users to go to see the site, that’s what this site is providing.
December 8, 2015 at 10:18 am
ite? efit market is the write of n thornicroft a software th t e a
March 22, 2019 at 2:12 pm
It’s 2019 and I have to say clusterKnoppix is still amazing. I’ve been trying to make a Linux cluster for two and a half months and clusterKnoppix did it in seconds. Sure I made it in a VM which is pointless for a cluster but it shows how easy it is. Nodes are added as they are booting up. It’s sad this distro was discontinued. You can still get it as of March 2019 at https://sourceforge.net/projects/archiveos/