Hi there,

I have a Linux user for many years. I also got very lazy with my distribution. I am running a openmosix cluster of a few machines, running on Fedora Core 1, also since many years. And I did not forget the 0 in Fedora 10, I am really running Fedora Core 1, still and forever.

In normal everyday operation, the applications work very well. I am starting to get tired, though, of always having to adapt a new application to my old plateform. Therefore, I decided to take the "challenge" of updating my OS to the newest Fedora. I also plan to change my cluster application from OpenMosix to a Beowulf.

Since I have not made any upgrade for a long, long, long time, I would like to have some opinion of LQ members. Firstly, is it possible to make an upgrade directly from my old, old Fedora core 1 directly to Fedora 10, or do I have to upgrade step wise, from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 ...? Secondly, has anyone experienced setting up a Beowulf cluster on Fedora 10 (any impression would be helpfull)???

I thank you for your time. Cheers

I suggest making a backup of your /etc (diff configs later), /home (and maybe /var/log/rpmpkgs to check if you miss something), wipe clean and install F10: more efficient and way less error-prone. If you are pretty sure your applications won't survive without major rework you could even choose to dd the disks and run 'em in F10 in VMware. That way at least your get the security, stability, improvement and performance benefits of your new OS platform while retaining the chance to phase/iron out things.

I'd suggest you make your OpenMosix-to-Beowulf conversion a separate thread.

Support for any one version of Fedora is now only 13 months (F10 is down to 7 right now). I would look at Centos. Centos is RHEL(Red Hat Enterprise Linux) with the logos removed (made from RH src rpms). Centos is free to download/update (unlike RHEL) and has a five year(plus) support life. It was based on FC6 so it will "feel" very similar to it.

Hi there,

Thank you for the advice, but I believe I will stick with Fedora for a little while longer. In the past, I have tried other distros, Centos included, and always landed back with Fedora (don't know why, as a matter of fact)

But this raise a second question. If there is no suitable answer to it, I will have to look further. In my idea of home cluster, I use any machines that I can grab, to add some number crunching power to the rest, which works perfectly up to now. This also means, that for a few of them, they have been given to me by friends, when something was defect. And god knows that the first things that break on PC is the damn CD drive. So, I have very old machines, with no CD drive into them. I also don't want to invest anymore in a machine that is a few years old.

From the idea of reinstalling a new version of Fedora or Centos, I would have to be able to fit the boot.iso on a floppy, and make a network installation. I also believe that the newer boot.iso files don't fit on a floppy. What can I do.

Like I said, if there are no suitable answers, I might drop the idea of clustering, and just look into buying a new PC. But this solution makes me sad. I find terrible to throw perfectly good machines, just because they are out-of-date. My first idea behind a home cluster was to be able to have some CPU power without having to spend to much. Just to say, in this openmosix cluster, I have more computing power than any top of the line/state of the art PC you can buy nowadays, with absolutely no cost, just alot of elbow grease.

Anyway, thanks for your time. Cheers