I was bored the other day and decided to see if I could construct a simple cluster from parts laying around the house. I say started/finished becasue it works but it is only two nodes at the moment and I plan on adding and/or upgrading nodes. Below is a link to the page for it. It is my first cluster attempt so any advice, suggestions, and comments would be appreciated.

http://home.attmil.ne.jp/a/jm/

Good job. Reminds me of my first cluster experience with a bunch of P133/166/200 machines. Good experience indeed.

Thanks for sharing the information with all of us. We need more people such as yourself in our community!

Justin

Nice report,
I am planning to build me a cluster of about 6 - 8 nodes to the summer 2004, it is intended to solve large numerical simulations. Do you recognize a forum or community dealing with this specific topic or shall we run one hear?

I*m currently running Slack 9.1 but I'm considering Debian as they have an on-going cluster project: http://www.debian.org/ports/beowulf/

Please, may I have your thoughts and ideas in this subject.

Best regards
/tungsten

I plan on adding nodes and possibly upgrading to faster computers when I get the time, resources, and need to do so. I haven't really found a forum or community that is based solely for clustering. Most of the links i have found are dead or outdated.

I took a look at the Debian package. It just looks like they are bundling freely available clustering tools together and distributing it as a package. If you like Slackware and it fits your needs, just stick with it. It shouldn't be any harder to setup then the Debian package and should allow more customization. I am hoping to add Open PBS for job scheduling as soon as they activate my account.

I have also checked amzaon and half.com for books on programming in MPI and the cheapest ones that are current start around $60. You can probably get the same documentation from the website of which ever message passing software you use. It really isn't too hard to add message passing support to programs if you can program fairly decent in the language you are using.

I haven't really done too much programming with the cluster at the moment and am waiting until I upgrade all the NICs to 100bps and add an additional node or two.

Thanks for your comments they sounds sense. I will keep Slack as I'm very satisfied with it .

I wish you a Merry Christmas
Per

There is a beowulf mailing list at beowulf.org. If you look through the archives there was a post a few months ago about Georgetown U putting up a mailing list or forum. I never joined that one, though. I subscribe to the Beowulf list and there is alot of good information that gets posted and a good place to ask questions also.

Thanks for the tips and trixs jcookeman, I will join the beowulf.org list.

By the way why is the cluster technique named Beowulf. Beowulf is the king of my ansisters (west sweden). http://www.lone-star.net/literature/beowulf/

All the bests
Per