Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes)
- Original Message - From: Alvin Oga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Darryl Röthering [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 1:29 AM Subject: Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes) - am insterested too in... - if system21 fails...( simulate it with pull the power plug ) what happens.. - how to keep data syncrhonized on the cluster I am looking into the same thing. I want to keep -- dare I say it -- mail spools ready for a hot swap over to my secondary server. I haven't fully tested yet, but I was assured that by using Enbd (network block device) I could Raid mirror across the network. I can't seem to find what I did with the mailing list address, but look for Enhanced NetBlock Device http://www.it.uc3m.es/~ptb/nbd/
Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes)
hi kevin... wow... cool... haven't seen or heard of nbd...but if it does the trick humm maybe the time is here for cheap-easily accessible clusters for high volume web/email servers ?? -- only problem now is time to spend to build up the clusters and pull the (ethernet or power0 plugs on a few boxes and see if it keeps working... thanx alvin http://www.linux-1U.net On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Kevin Long wrote: - Original Message - From: Alvin Oga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Darryl Röthering [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 1:29 AM Subject: Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes) - am insterested too in... - if system21 fails...( simulate it with pull the power plug ) what happens.. - how to keep data syncrhonized on the cluster I am looking into the same thing. I want to keep -- dare I say it -- mail spools ready for a hot swap over to my secondary server. I haven't fully tested yet, but I was assured that by using Enbd (network block device) I could Raid mirror across the network. I can't seem to find what I did with the mailing list address, but look for Enhanced NetBlock Device http://www.it.uc3m.es/~ptb/nbd/
Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes)
Hey Keep me posted (if you would) about how your setup works. (Sounds like you may have the time to test soon. Me, it will be 1st of Apr at the soonest) If by some miracle I get to work on it I will describe the entire process to let you know of any pitfalls. I have studied this a bit, and am following the list (as well as Linux Virtual Machine cluster's list) I'd be glad to toss around ideas as I am banking on this along with heartbeat saving me any downtime -- otherwise I'm off to the tried-and-true (albeit slow cron+scp method and pray). The thing I am looking out for is what to do if one does go down. How can I get the raid-1 to sync back up right. - Original Message - From: Alvin Oga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Kevin Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 6:32 PM Subject: Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes) hi kevin... wow... cool... haven't seen or heard of nbd...but if it does the trick humm maybe the time is here for cheap-easily accessible clusters for high volume web/email servers ?? -- only problem now is time to spend to build up the clusters and pull the (ethernet or power0 plugs on a few boxes and see if it keeps working... thanx alvin http://www.linux-1U.net On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Kevin Long wrote: - Original Message - From: Alvin Oga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Darryl Röthering [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 1:29 AM Subject: Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes) - am insterested too in... - if system21 fails...( simulate it with pull the power plug ) what happens.. - how to keep data syncrhonized on the cluster I am looking into the same thing. I want to keep -- dare I say it -- mail spools ready for a hot swap over to my secondary server. I haven't fully tested yet, but I was assured that by using Enbd (network block device) I could Raid mirror across the network. I can't seem to find what I did with the mailing list address, but look for Enhanced NetBlock Device http://www.it.uc3m.es/~ptb/nbd/
Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes)
hi ya.. my only worry about automated swaps for failed systems is depending on why it failed in the first place...you can automatically/blindly take a good system and blow it up too by putting it live instead of checking why it died in the first place... just being paranoid... usually.the systems will die when you are not there anyway so they should have 24x7 coverage in either caseotherwise... i claim it has to wait... till the next shift comes in...or be on call ... which is expensive for most people...cannot just drop the diinner date and to check on what is usually a false alarm... fun stufftricky stuff... even worst if its real-time transaction based 24x7 w/ 99.% uptime etc... c ya alvin and nope...dont have the time have tons of machines for testing though. well enough to make a suitable test cluster On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Kevin Long wrote: Hey Keep me posted (if you would) about how your setup works. (Sounds like you may have the time to test soon. Me, it will be 1st of Apr at the soonest) If by some miracle I get to work on it I will describe the entire process to let you know of any pitfalls. I have studied this a bit, and am following the list (as well as Linux Virtual Machine cluster's list) I'd be glad to toss around ideas as I am banking on this along with heartbeat saving me any downtime -- otherwise I'm off to the tried-and-true (albeit slow cron+scp method and pray). The thing I am looking out for is what to do if one does go down. How can I get the raid-1 to sync back up right. - Original Message - From: Alvin Oga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Kevin Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 6:32 PM Subject: Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes) hi kevin... wow... cool... haven't seen or heard of nbd...but if it does the trick humm maybe the time is here for cheap-easily accessible clusters for high volume web/email servers ?? -- only problem now is time to spend to build up the clusters and pull the (ethernet or power0 plugs on a few boxes and see if it keeps working... thanx alvin http://www.linux-1U.net On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Kevin Long wrote: - Original Message - From: Alvin Oga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Darryl Röthering [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 1:29 AM Subject: Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes) - am insterested too in... - if system21 fails...( simulate it with pull the power plug ) what happens.. - how to keep data syncrhonized on the cluster I am looking into the same thing. I want to keep -- dare I say it -- mail spools ready for a hot swap over to my secondary server. I haven't fully tested yet, but I was assured that by using Enbd (network block device) I could Raid mirror across the network. I can't seem to find what I did with the mailing list address, but look for Enhanced NetBlock Device http://www.it.uc3m.es/~ptb/nbd/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Beowulf cluster (was: parallel clusters of single cpu boxes)
hi ya how about either or any of... beowulf... resonate... ( commercial prg and expensive ) valinux... round-robin-DNS forgot the other pkg... ..other cluster mangers ... - am insterested too in... - if system21 fails...( simulate it with pull the power plug ) what happens.. - how to keep data syncrhonized on the cluster For real time apps... like credit card processing...probably easier for the credit card sw to write the transaction info to 3 different places before sending the final authorization to the customer ?? For static web pages and other historical sitesthat changes say daily a little more work to copy daily changes around ?? - disks that crash in the middle of editing/updating the new data c ya alvin On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Darryl Röthering wrote: Bingo Jimmy! Thanks a million! Anyone here ever try putting together a Beowulf cluster?
Re: Beowulf cluster
Here is one other HOWTO http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/research/beowulf/tutorial/ Enjoy -- Greg. -- What do you want to spend today? Debian GNU/Linux (Free for an UNLIMITED time) http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html Greg VenceKH2EA/4
Re: Beowulf cluster
On Thu, 27 Aug 1998, Gregory Dickinson wrote: This might sound silly, but does anyone know of any documentation anywhere that tells one how to set up a Beowulf-type cluster for SMP. A beowulf cluster does no SMP (Although there are libraries which can 'emulate' SMP behaviour). It's better described as MPP. Maarten _ | TU Delft, The Netherlands, Faculty of Information Technology and Systems | | Department of Electrical Engineering| | Computer Architecture and Digital Technique section | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -
Re: Beowulf cluster
On Fri, 28 Aug 1998, Maarten Boekhold wrote: On Thu, 27 Aug 1998, Gregory Dickinson wrote: This might sound silly, but does anyone know of any documentation anywhere that tells one how to set up a Beowulf-type cluster for SMP. A beowulf cluster does no SMP (Although there are libraries which can 'emulate' SMP behaviour). It's better described as MPP. Maarten Hmm - is beowulf a .deb? and if so, is it in /slink/non-free (not that I can offord to have one right now, but maybe) Matthew -- Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo Steward of the Cambridge Tolkien Society Selwyn College Computer Support http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Chamber/8841/ http://www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/tolkien/ http://pick.sel.cam.ac.uk/
Re: Beowulf cluster
M.C. Vernon wrote: Hmm - is beowulf a .deb? and if so, is it in /slink/non-free It seems to be available as RPM's. You can use alien to get it installed. (not that I can offord to have one right now, but maybe) Me either. However, as a consultant I see 486's trashed from time to time... Enjoy -- Greg. -- What do you want to spend today? Debian GNU/Linux (Free for an UNLIMITED time) http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html Greg VenceKH2EA/4
Re: Beowulf cluster
Greg Vence wrote: M.C. Vernon wrote: Hmm - is beowulf a .deb? and if so, is it in /slink/non-free It seems to be available as RPM's. You can use alien to get it installed. Weren't some people from the beowolf team interested in switching to .deb or at least packaging new stuff also as .deb files? I'm sorry, but I lost track here. Regards, Joey -- VFS: no free i-nodes, contact Linus -- finlandia, Feb '94
Re: Beowulf cluster
On Fri, 28 Aug 1998, Martin Schulze wrote: Greg Vence wrote: M.C. Vernon wrote: Hmm - is beowulf a .deb? and if so, is it in /slink/non-free It seems to be available as RPM's. You can use alien to get it installed. Weren't some people from the beowolf team interested in switching to .deb or at least packaging new stuff also as .deb files? I'm sorry, but I lost track here. Hmm - does one need a beowulf in order to debianise the source? and if not then even my measly pick.sel (which approximates to the amount of memory it has ;) ) could produce a .deb for rich people with supercomputers everywhere? Matthew -- Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo Steward of the Cambridge Tolkien Society Selwyn College Computer Support http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Chamber/8841/ http://www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/tolkien/ http://pick.sel.cam.ac.uk/
Re: Beowulf cluster
M.C. Vernon wrote: Weren't some people from the beowolf team interested in switching to .deb or at least packaging new stuff also as .deb files? I'm sorry, but I lost track here. Hmm - does one need a beowulf in order to debianise the source? I thought beowulf cluster are binary compatible to regular boxes so I don't think you'd need a beowulf cluster in order to package things. and if not then even my measly pick.sel (which approximates to the amount of memory it has ;) ) could produce a .deb for rich people with supercomputers everywhere? I don't understand. Regards, Joey -- VFS: no free i-nodes, contact Linus -- finlandia, Feb '94
Re: Beowulf cluster
On Fri, 28 Aug 1998, Martin Schulze wrote: M.C. Vernon wrote: Weren't some people from the beowolf team interested in switching to .deb or at least packaging new stuff also as .deb files? I'm sorry, but I lost track here. Hmm - does one need a beowulf in order to debianise the source? I thought beowulf cluster are binary compatible to regular boxes so I don't think you'd need a beowulf cluster in order to package things. and if not then even my measly pick.sel (which approximates to the amount of memory it has ;) ) could produce a .deb for rich people with supercomputers everywhere? I don't understand. Sorry - in my attempts to be ironic I failed to make myself clear. I was offering to package beowulf as .deb, for people with the money to make beowulf clusters. I then realised the irony of doing this on pick.sel ;) HTH, Matthew -- Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo Steward of the Cambridge Tolkien Society Selwyn College Computer Support http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Chamber/8841/ http://www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/tolkien/ http://pick.sel.cam.ac.uk/
Re: Beowulf cluster
On Fri, Aug 28, 1998 at 09:22:00AM -0400, Greg Vence wrote: M.C. Vernon wrote: Hmm - is beowulf a .deb? and if so, is it in /slink/non-free It seems to be available as RPM's. You can use alien to get it installed. I am tossing around the idea of a cheap beowulf cluster...junked PCs etc. I think some of the beowulf stuff is already available? from what I remember Beowulf uses PVM, and that is already packaged. They basically seemed when I read their pages to be makeing add ons which make PVM more powerfull (Like a cool way to bind 2 (or more) ethernet segments together into 1 much faster segment - of course every machine on the segment needs 2 cards...but.. it look sway cool) hmmm is anyone working on these add ons? ifenslave is really cool looking... (not that I can offord to have one right now, but maybe) Me either. However, as a consultant I see 486's trashed from time to time... I see them go out in huge piles...huge piles -Steve -- /* -- Stephen Carpenter [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] */ E-mail Bumper Stickers: A FREE America or a Drug-Free America: You can't have both! honk if you Love Linux
Re: Beowulf cluster
from what I remember Beowulf uses PVM, and that is already packaged. They basically seemed when I read their pages to be makeing add ons which make PVM more powerfull From what I recall, PVM is being superseded by MPI. There is already a Debian packaged implementation of MPI called mpich. I'd suggest using MPI instead of PVM. By the way, has anyone adopted MPICH since it was orphaned (poor little mpich :))? If not, I'll adopt it. -Ossama
Re: Beowulf cluster
On 28 Aug, Ossama Othman wrote: from what I remember Beowulf uses PVM, and that is already packaged. They basically seemed when I read their pages to be makeing add ons which make PVM more powerfull From what I recall, PVM is being superseded by MPI. There is already a Debian packaged implementation of MPI called mpich. I'd suggest using MPI instead of PVM. By the way, has anyone adopted MPICH since it was orphaned (poor little mpich :))? If not, I'll adopt it. -Ossama My impression, from having looked into them both, is that PVM is better at some things and MPI is better at others, so both are still used. BTW, in answer to the original question (which I've since deleted), is that you can use SMP in a Beowulf cluster. At least, there isn't any technical reason that I know of why you couldn't. Simply build the Beowulf cluster out of SMP-capable systems, install multiple processors in each one, and make sure to compile SMP into the kernels when you set it up. My guess is that most Beowulf class clusters don't do this, because the limiting factor on computation speed in most clusters is communication speed. Having more than one processor in the same box only exaggerates the communication speed problem. Also, most PC-based SMP implementations have difficulty with memory bandwidth. I followed the linux-smp mailing list for a short while; one of the things that came up was that there were many SMP boxes which ran two memory intensive processes slower in parallel than they did sequentially. That is, it was actually faster to not use the second processor! My guess is that you haven't seen anything on SMP Beowulfs preciesly because of the memory and network bandwidth problems, but I've never built a Beowulf, so I don't really want to put words in the mouth of anyone who has. -- Stephen Ryan Debian GNU/Linux Mathematics graduate student, Dartmouth College
Re: Beowulf cluster (fwd)
Subject: Re: Beowulf cluster References: [EMAIL PROTECTED] BTW, you forgot to send this to the list... You question at the bottom seemed to imply that. ??? If you care to repost this to the list I'm ok w/ that. Andrew Martin Adrian Cater wrote: M.C. Vernon wrote: Hmm - is beowulf a .deb? and if so, is it in /slink/non-free It seems to be available as RPM's. You can use alien to get it installed. (not that I can offord to have one right now, but maybe) Me either. However, as a consultant I see 486's trashed from time to time... Enjoy -- Greg. -- What do you want to spend today? Debian GNU/Linux (Free for an UNLIMITED time) http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html Greg VenceKH2EA/4 -- The Beowulf project is one implementation of a cluster - it happens to be at NASA in the US. There's more than one way to build a cluster. There's no such thing as a beowulf . The idea behind a cluster should be: Yes, however, if you read the URLs I initially indicated, several others have used the packages that the Beowulf project made. They tend to call themselves Beowulf class clusters. For example: We need to render realistic looking sea/characters/views of the Titanic I am aware of this project. In fact, that is the same reason I've been putting together plans to do the a cluster. I have an idea for an animated movie and don't have access to the facilities. I'm collecting old 486 boxes and it looks like some places are now dumping old P5's. :) -- There is an Extreme Linux CD which incorporates some of the software used by the Beowulf project at NASA. It _isn't_ endorsed by NASA/NASA official software because AFAIK the good people at NASA are Federal civil servants - and NASA is prohibited from endorsing products. The NASA developed stuff is in the public domain because it has to be - again, it's because it's Federally funded and the US Govt. doesn't enforce its rights under copyright law for publically funded work. Essentially, it's RedHat 5, plus a few tweaks. The good people at NASA picked RedHat because it had a packaging system - and Slackware / tar.gz source didn't. They have been asked to provide .tar.gz source - but they're busy people doing system maintenance etc in addition to their main jobs. There is _no_reason_ why Debian, especially with Apt as package manager and auto-updates, couldn't be _the_ distribution of choice. That's one reason I started to package LAM and would be prepared to take over MPICH if it hasn't been taken from John Goerzen. I've only got two machines: I haven't got a massively parallel problem: I don't consider myself a computational guru but this is a quick summary. Several systems out there running massively parallel/cluster software applications are based on Debian: could someone who is actually running one add anything to this ?? I realize we could make this stuff packaged by Debian. I'd like that. However, I was just commenting on the current availability of software. I don't have the time or interest to package that. I'm sure you or John would L8r -- Greg. -- What do you want to spend today? Debian GNU/Linux (Free for an UNLIMITED time) http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html Greg VenceKH2EA/4 - End of forwarded message from Greg Vence -
Re: Beowulf cluster
Home Page http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/beowulf/beowulf.html HOWTO http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/beowulf/howto/howto.html Enjoy -- Greg. Gregory Dickinson wrote: This might sound silly, but does anyone know of any documentation anywhere that tells one how to set up a Beowulf-type cluster for SMP. --Thanks, Greg Dickinson -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null -- What do you want to spend today? Debian GNU/Linux (Free for an UNLIMITED time) http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html Greg VenceKH2EA/4
