is there a clustering program for linux (or unix in general i plan on trying it with a BSD os as well) that is free and easy to install and use, i want to be able to have it run on any unix-like operating system i like for a frontend and for it to be easy to add nodes to it, how do i go about doing this. i know all the nodes need to have the same operating system as the frontend but what program can i use to cluster all of these machines together.

if it works in bsd than thats even better than only working in linux

To give an accurate answer, you would have to explain what your end goal is with this setup. A "cluster" is really nothing more than a few machines on the same LAN with identical software. You don't actually need any specialized clustering software, you just need a program that is smart enough to divide it's work between different nodes.

There really isn't a one size fits all solution to the problem. If you want to setup a cluster to render 3D, that would be a different setup than if you wanted it to convert your audio collection into OGG, which would be a different setup than setting up a GCC cluster, etc, etc.

i want my collection of boxes to work together as one computer (sorta like rocks) i have't getting much success with rocks and i decided i would do it from scratch, strictly for educational purposes. wether it be splitting the display into 8 screens, getting a group of computers to combine and work like a single machine

when i start thinking about the splitting display idea i want to know if i can get prompts to monitor my networks activity in real time with a terminal on one of the screens, the others can serve other purposes. whats the program that manages the display (what gets displayed on each screen) but first thing is first. how do you connect all of them together

i want my collection of boxes to work together as one computer (sorta like rocks or atleast what we have been using it for but what i mean by it being like rocks is that you can easily connect and install nodes through network booting, booting the cluster cd while the frontend has been told to search for nodes and the node will search for a dhcp server whch should be up and running in the frontend after installation of the frontend's os) i have't been getting much success with rocks and i decided i would do it from scratch, strictly for educational purposes. wether it be splitting the display into 8 screens, getting a group of computers to combine and work like a single machine

when i start thinking about the splitting display idea i want to know if i can get prompts to monitor my networks activity in real time with a terminal on one of the screens, the others can serve other purposes. whats the program that manages the display (what gets displayed on each screen) but first thing is first. how do you connect all of them together

The answer could be no really. While it is easy to set up a cluster, the actual method of getting all the nodes to work on a project isn't easy.

Sun used to have a pretty good setup, the only catch was you has to buy at least one server. But once it was setup, the entire wan set of computers you have could be turned into a cluster. You didn't need special programs to split tasks. It did all that.

well is there a clustering program that has easy to understand documentation and up to now i just want to get the cluster to work as just one machine and nothing else unless my multi-screen request is still possible with whatever software you suggest

Look here and go down to the bottom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cluster

Also might look at how places like seti@home use distributed systems. Basically the cluster and grid are similar.

I don't know of any easy way to use 10 computers to make a single computer faster if that is what you want to do.

There are many clusters and ways to do tasks but almost none of them have to do with a home user. Everyday companies and government workers make and uses clusters. The tasks range from reading handwriting on letters to nuclear bomb models to dna sequencing to movie rendering. Just none of them apply to a home users since each one is a one of a kind application made for the users needs.

In short: this isn't how clustering works. Nothing will let you combine the power of all of the computers into one virtual computer which you can then use for day to day tasks.

Clusters can only run specialized software to do specialized tasks. So again, if you wanted to do one thing that could easily be broken up into multiple tasks like converting audio tracks, then a cluster could help you. But if you just want a powerful machine to actually sit down and use like a normal computer, you're out of luck.

As for an easy to use clustering platform, Rocks is already a pretty good choice. If you had a problem with that, I'm not sure what else to suggest.

rocks has been giving me trouble lately, the os isn't detecting the cdrom but i just want to move on and avoid rocks, i was exploring clustering in debian and FreeBSD (off topic i know but i'm just poking around)

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Cluster-HOWTO.html is maybe a poorly phrased how to but it also provides a point of view of ways to run a cluster. As a point here, there are many ways to run clusters. There are many ways to distribute resources which is what you want to do or more exactly you want to combine resources.

I can't really give you an exact answer here. The topic you ask is quite broad. A home user can't really use a cluster easily. They can share resources, they can distribute over the lan data but to combine the processing power of 10 to enhance a single node is difficult.

See the sun grid at oracle. I think they have a 30 eval or something like that maybe.

Before SUN was bought by Orcale, it was even an open source project and the latest 6.2u5 courtesy binaries of the open source version may be found still the net. There are also ongoing projects like GridEngine.org, Son of GridEngine and Open Grid Scheduler based on the latest open source. Commerical support and an additional fork are from Univa and their open source repository, while Oracle turned to closed source.

NB: with SGE it’s even possible to have a heterogenous cluster, but it’s a matter of your set up to get the correct binaries for the node the job was scheduled to.

And as others pointed out: any resource management software will help to serialize your workflow and share the resources among the group of users (you can even install SGE on a local machine just for this purpose). But if you want to parallelize your applications, you will need to look into MPI (like MPICH2 or Open MPI), PVM, OpenMP, Linda, Charm++, GlobalArrays or other libraries.

i have been doing a little research and i have found out that the way people have done it was that they would install the same os on every node they planned on putting in the cluster, another way they did it was that they set up a dhcp and dns on the front end and net booted the nodes and connected the frontend to it (correct me if i'm wrong) and installed cluster management software to control the entire project, how do i make a network bootloader for adding nodes to a front end machine

rocks does this automatically, when you type in the command it automatically sets up a dhcp server and when you startup the node with the cd inside it will try to connect to the dhcp server and the frontend will automatically set it up as a node and the node will boot the node installation packages and install them once it discovers the dhcp server. i'm guessing it's the same case with other clusters. what are some good (they don't have to be easy) cluster management tools and how do i get a node installed

---------- Post added 09-01-11 at 05:43 PM ----------

i have been doing a little research and i have found out that the way people have done it was that they would install the same os on every node they planned on putting in the cluster, another way they did it was that they set up a dhcp and dns on the front end and net booted the nodes and connected the frontend to it (correct me if i'm wrong) and installed cluster management software to control the entire project, how do i make a network bootloader for adding nodes to a front end machine

rocks does this automatically, when you type in the command it automatically sets up a dhcp server and when you startup the node with the cd inside it will try to connect to the dhcp server and the frontend will automatically set it up as a node and the node will boot the node installation packages and install them once it discovers the dhcp server. i'm guessing it's the same case with other clusters. what are some good (they don't have to be easy) cluster management tools and how do i get a node installed