Hello KNOPPIX fans,

I just finished doing an initial port of OpenSSI to KNOPPIX 3.6. For those not familiar with OpenSSI, it is a highly-available, comprehensive single-system image clustering OS, that allows you to manage your cluster like a single, giant SMP machine. All resources in the cluster, including filesystems, processes, devices, IPC objects, and more, can be transparently accessed from anywhere in the cluster. All you need to build an OpenSSI cluster are two or more computers and a private network switch.

There are a few caveats for this first cut of KNOPPIX with OpenSSI. One is that I deleted OpenOffice so that the compressed root image could fit on a 700MB CD. I don't think OpenSSI added an enormous amount of data to the root image, but I wasn't able to compress it small enough without deleting something big like OpenOffice. It can be restored in the future if the size of the root image can be reduced in a better way. Other known issues are listed below.

If you're interested in playing with this, you can download the ISO image from OpenSSI.org. Please let me know what you think, and feel free to copy OpenSSI's user's mailing list ([email protected]).

If you'd like to tinker with this integration of OpenSSI and KNOPPIX, and attempt to fix some of the issues below, so much the better! You can contact me with any questions or suggestions you might have. You can also feel free to copy OpenSSI's developer's mailing list ([email protected]).

Again, you can download the ISO image from OpenSSI.org.

Enjoy!

Brian Watson
OpenSSI project developer


Known issues:

- Administrative
* resolve .dpkg-new files that resulted from installing OpenSSI
* /var/run/utmp and /var/log/wtmp should be clusterwide files
* the kernel version number needs an OpenSSI revision number
* restore OpenOffice if space can be reduced in another way

- Debugging
* after starting X Windows, the mouse does not work
* when at runlevel 5, init does not start processes on node 2
* KNOPPIX fstab generation for local partitions is broken
* /var/run doesn't have everything from /KNOPPIX/var/run

- Development
* add "quickup" addnode feature, to avoid running ssi-addnode
* merge microcode support into devfsd