cluster newb
 

Hi to y'all :-)
I've decided that I want start up a Linux-cluster for crunching some BOINC calculations 8-)
The thing just is, that I'm a Linux-newbie for real so please bear with me.
I understand from reading a description of clusterKnoppix that it's possible to set up a cluster in a way that the nodes, doesn't need to comprise of anything other than the MB a CPU and RAM. And of course some networking capability, but that's on the MB.
A first question then is what distro will serve me best. At this point the only thing I want the cluster to do is BOINC, so all in all it's a very not-blingbling cluster concerning its capabilities.
I do want it to run in way that there is no need for a hard disk, as I can get a 2gig USB flash cheaper than the cheapest sata2 hard drive. So I guess it's something like DSL or another very lightweight distro, though they're not many? If you actually need that much more besides a kernel to boot, and the proper libraries e.g openMosix.

Hope you'll help me get started with this and perhaps point me to books and other resources I, as a newb, ought to chew my way through first, even if my goal isn't to be a guru .. I just want to be able to set up and maintain the cluster in mention.

Also; initially the plan was to base the nodes on an Athlon X2 64 4800+, but then I read a small guide called "Advantages of openMosix on IBM xSeries that mentions an advantage on Xeon CPU's over ?X? due to 'Hyper Threading'. The guide is relatively old, so is this advantage still the case, and so much so that I should reconsider basing the nodes on the 4800+? Even if I'd prefer AMD, "just because" :)

try this Link

http://www.livecdlist.com/?pick=All&...ing&sort=&sm=1

Jake

When sorting that list by x86-64/all functions Gentoo is the smallest distro, but do I actually need a distro? can't I 'just' scape down to kernel, lightweight window manager, and the proper libraries for clustering?
The highest voted clustering distro is dyne:bolic (444MB!) which I haven't even heard of before :)
So I don't know what would be recommendable; scraping any unneeded apps from dyne:bolic and making it x86-64, or go with Gentoo and make it cluster ready? But perhaps your suggestion was that I raised the question on the livecdforums? :)
It's not meant to be a project that's going to be complete by the end of the month, in any way ;-)