openmosix knoppix

Hello!

my suggestion is to use an openmosix patched kernel instead of a standard one, to make possible using a group of interconnected knoppix computers to work faster by joining their resources. At least older computers will become more useful if there were another faster knoppix computers in its own LAN, giving them 'a hand', it will be great to build a fast cluster to play with it, or using the laptop and the desktop computer to process together a complex task from time to time, etc.
cheers
carlos

Ok, this idea.....WOW!
Great idea!
I messed around with mosix with the K12LTSP and this would be amazing if you could install a linux terminal server and pop in knoppix booted to the mosix kernel and have a cluster in minutes!!!
I would love to see this work. :D

great idea

I would love to see this implemented also.

I found it !!!
ClusterKnoppix

Remaster with openMosix support and cluster management tools (openmosixview) Also with a openMosix 'terminal server support' which can be used to very easy add extra nodes ~ 700MB

* Homepage http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix

site is not responding :(

I hope to try it soon!

Finished the download! :) will let you know how it goes, will probably do some testing with it tomorrow ...:)

Yes, yes, this all sounds fantastic, but what do you need a supercomputer cluster for exactly? Are you running massively parallel processes? Are you distributing the load? What?

I have 25 Pentium MMXs (233Mhz, 128MB), 25 Pentium IIIs (448Mhz, 256MB) and soon 25 Pentium IVs (2Ghz, 512MB) on one LAN. Should I make this one massive cluster? Why? How?

Regards,

I'm thinking of using it for image rendering (Blender) and compiling kernels, etc.

This looks pretty cool. I'm looking forward to some documentation/howto's though. I'd be interested to hear feedback from people who have tried this out.

Hi,

I've added some documentation on http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix/doc/

Feel free to tell me what more information/features you need.

This works great. If you boot all the PC's in X, it doesn't even matter which one is the master and which one is the slave, they will each migrate processes to each other when applicable.

dolphin,

You absolutely rock! I really look forward to playing around with this. I'm pretty busy right now, but later in the week I hope to have some time to sit down experiment a bit. I must say however that what you have done looks awefully nice.

I assume that it's possible to do a hdinstall of clusterknoppix as well. What a nice way this would be to centralize management and increase performance across my small home network.

Can you put this on e/lMule? I get a "can't connect to server" message...
(was going to ask why you don't also put up a simple bootfloppy, but hehe don't have 2.88MB floppies)

btw, if I see it correctly the OpenMosix patched kernels will exchange processes " no matter what". So now for some thin client clusterKnoppix bootimage? (without the gigantic RAM disk)

I'll look a bit around if there isn't already such a distro around, kernel + X + X configure scripts. Movix seems a good point to start, just need to replace the kernel, isn't it?

OK, clusterKNOPPIX is based on V3.2 20030503. Also, it's still a 690MB ISO. So what apps were deleted from the original KNOPPIX ISO?

Regards,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by A. Jorge Garcia

OK, clusterKNOPPIX is based on V3.2 20030503. Also, it's still a 690MB ISO. So what apps were deleted from the original KNOPPIX ISO?

Regards,

---

Not much that I can see. GnomeMeeting is gone (but didn't work for me anyway). There is an updated kernel of course. Probably some other stuff, but it's pretty much the same.

I've now downloaded clusterKnoppix, via gFTP (Konqueror didn't work), and the iso MD5 checksum was correct. But when I boot the CD I get a bunch of errors (loop.o not found, etc.). And when setting up the PXE server I get the message that my network card is not configured, no matter what I do next it won't start the server. And the network card indeed doesn't work.

Testcd tells me that there are bad md5 sums, so it's probably the (fresh) 1/2/4x CD-RW medium that gives errors. I've reburned it twice (same CD), and I'm now burning it over my older copy of 'vanilla' Knoppix at 2x, so I hope that (used) CD-RW will work.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by A. Jorge Garcia

OK, clusterKNOPPIX is based on V3.2 20030503. Also, it's still a 690MB ISO. So what apps were deleted from the original KNOPPIX ISO?

Regards,

---

- removed auctex emacs21 gettext-el tetex-base tetex-bin tetex-extra
- added blender-2.26-3 , openmosixview,openmosix-tools, openmosix
(info also on the website)

I don't really see a reason to make the CD smaller, the CD can contain 700MB, so why not make fully use of it?

I want it to be as close to a original knoppix as possible, so that you only need 1 CD :-)

BTW, this is all GPL, right? Maybe Klaus will include it in the standard KNOPPIX release?

Klaus, you listening?

TIA,

I know thing about clustering except, that it's a group of comps that do the work of a supercomputer.

Now, how would I set this up with Cluster Knoppix? Is it setup, when I boot each PC from the CD automaticaly?

here is my deal... i have a bunch of older, crappy-ish computers i got for free... they dont have harddrives or monitors/keyboards... (no biggie, knoppix replaces hard drive, and i have a spare monitor and keyboard i swap around to test) but they do have CD roms, that they can boot from.... what I would LOVE to do, is remaster clusterknoppix(or set up an etherboot) to boot up, and start sshd (for system maintance...) and fire up openmosix and distcc, and connect to my main computer as nodes, effectivly giving my main computer a bit more CPU cycles.. I am hoping to automate this, so if the computers ever go down (power out) when they come back online, they boot and reconnect as nodes automatically.... Also, i am behind a private router that runs a dhcp... is there any way to leave that intact (not turn it off) and get this dream of mine to work?


In the long lun, I hope to be able to slap a remastered CD into my parents computer and get all the comps running as a large distcc/openmosix cluster for speedy remaster fun, and install-gentoo-stage1-on-a-brand-new-lappy fun....


any advice is welcome...

OK, I was confusing OpenMosix with Beowolf. Beowolf clusters are clusters of PCs running Linux to do massive number crunching with specialized parallel processor comiplers and such.

Well, early on in the Beowolf project they started out with the "embarssingly parallel supercomputer" model. It went like this. If you had to run the same ellaborate calculation on several different numbers, you simply ran the calculation program on several different computers each for a different number and then pooled all the results when each program run terminated.

Can this be done on an OpenMosix cluster? As I understand it, I could link all my PCs on my LAN in such a cluster but start and monitor several processes from one PC, right?

For instance, say I want to calculate a billion digits of pi as accurately as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. I could evaluate the area under the curve y=4/(1+x^2) from 0 to 1 (=4arctan(1)-4arctan(0)=pi). Instead of evaluating this on one PC, I could assign 1/25th of this area to one PC, another 1/25th to another and so on. Could I start my area program from the same PC for all processes and eventaully the processes that can't be accomodated by the resources of my PC will migrate to other PCs in the cluster as needed? Can I then get the results of all 25 processes on my one PC when they are done to add them all together and get pi? I would use a reimann sum program for this with many subdivisions, hence the ellaborate calculation!

A better program may be to approximate the entire area from 0 to 1 with a power series and just evaluate as many terms as you need for millionth place accuracy! OOO, this sounds good. So, if I need 1000 terms, just run 1000 processes shared over 25 PCs!

This would be a great and easy intro to the world of supercomputing for my high school computer science students!

TIA