Cluster....which distro is best for the Nodes?
 

Hi, well I am a first time poster here though I have been an avid reader for the past month (just started using linux approximatly a month and a half ago). So far this webpage has been a major help to me in learning how linux works, I just have one little question......

I am currently incharge of fixing up a linux cluster in the physics lab I work in and I am kinda confused about what distro of linux I should install on the clusters??

Currently the program we are using uses a MPI system to inferface with the cluster. From what I read its a good idea that all fo the nodes and the master have the same kernel version, but besides that I dont know which distro to go with for all of the nodes.

I would like to upgrade the software on the Master node to Slackware 9.1 (what I use on my home computer) or RedHat 9.0, so I can get rid of the god awful half modified RedHat 7.3 Distro which is on it now.

On a side note what is the difference between Fedora and RedHat's newer Workstation and Server versions? Is it just that its not Live and its not supported? or is it a totally different product all together?

Currently the Cluster has half of its nodes upgraded to a newer Kernel (which is not even the latest) and the other half of them have the 2.4.2.6 Linux Kernel installed.

Also I was wondering about any good software for management of a cluster.....after searching around on the forums I found a link to system imager which sounds rather promising....but would love to hear more suggestions.

IS this the wrong forum to post this in er somethin?

Is this anything like what you are looking for?
http://openmosix.sourceforge.net/

yeah I looked at that before .... That is a REALLY interesting solution for the next program we might build for the project... but the one we use scurrently is Already MPI ... and openMOSIX is for non MPI programs that can have their job's FORKED... although if anyone knows how this works better then me and if it infact WILL work for an MPI program then I am all ears.

Although basically something like openMOSIX would be awsome... Just for the controll end of things.

Check out clusterknoppix. It's a modified Knoppix distro that uses the OpenMosix kernel. You might also want to check out openssi.

Beat me to it...

the problem with clusterknoppix is that you have to have PXE (pre executable environment) enabled on all of your nodes...(not fun)

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yeah the problem with cluster Knoppix is that ... well none of the nodes have CDROM's only the master node.... its a dedicated cluster. So I dont know if you mean install it to the Nodes individually or What.

The cluster is 16 2400 + althlon processors each with 2 GB of RAM and a 40 GB HDD each. One thing I was wondering was that how much Does havign a kernel that is compiled spefically for your processor actually help?(i.e. an athlon running on an athlon spefic kernel vs a i386 one.....is there any speed gain?)