I'm building a 1-master, 2-node cluster as part of a university project and have been told by my supervisor to use Red Hat Linux 9.0. Unfortunately the machines I'm using belong in a museum (we're talking 100Mhz 32Mb RAM and 1GB hard drives here) so I can't just install all the software that comes on the CDs. Can anyone tell me which packages, if any, I absolutely must install for clustering support?

Thanks for your help!
Ross

Which clustering package are you talking about? I do not believe any such thing comes built into RH9 but does in RH Enterprise. I've played around with linuxvirtualserver.org on RH9 with success before. I was using P4's with 1GB RAM and lots of disk though and I almost always install *everything*. Oh well... Keep in mind though that anything you didn't install at initial load time can be added later.

I'm not clear on this myself. What clustering packages are available? Do you mean Beowulf vs COW or actual cluster management rpms? As I understand it, I should be able to set up a simple cluster (no particular type) with any linux distrobution, but I'm yet to find a clear step by step tutorial on how to install linux for this purpose. Is it simply a case of ensuring NFS and MPI support?

I would like to get the installation right first time if possible, as I only have one cd rom drive between three machines. Unless I can get things installing over the network, I'm going to have to move the drive around every time I want to install something.

because of your hardware limits, i suggest installing linux with the very least amount of stuff you can (like no X) and then add what u need later.

You can use LiveCD distro.. But that too requires sufficient RAM.
So your clients can be of low resources but the server should be of good configuration. Also don't use X windows that can help u a lot.

Also specify that which project are u using to make clusture that also makes a difference