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ClusterKnoppix
Posted by
michael
on Thu May 29, 2003 10:03 AM
from the making-the-hard-things-easy dept.
from the making-the-hard-things-easy dept.
chronicon writes "Knoppix is the ultimate live CD. No geek-kit should be without it. Now Wim Vandersmissen has taken it a step futher by adding openMosix functionality. Drop the clusterKnoppix CD in your "server", boot up... boot up some networked clients... Knoppix built in LTSP magic kicks in and ta-da--instant cluster!"
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Imagine a (Score:5, Funny)
Hehe Neat (Score:1)
Re:Hehe Neat (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.google.co...nI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky | Last Journal: Sunday September 12 2004, @09:05AM)
Re:Hehe Neat (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.google.co...nI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky | Last Journal: Sunday September 12 2004, @09:05AM)
bzzzzt... sorry. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://youtube.com/watch?v=FCDJ0jhWKno | Last Journal: Tuesday November 14 2006, @01:31PM)
It would be nice to run a database or app. server in the mosix cluster with a web front-end. Apache itself will not scale over the cluster.
FTP Server shutdowned (Score:1)
(http://oisec.net/ | Last Journal: Monday February 24 2003, @01:22PM)
Imagine a Beowulf cluster!! (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 27 2003, @02:48PM)
Knoppix is impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://jm-smith.com/)
Having such easy clustering, with such an idiot-proof interface ("put the CD in the drive, boot, and you're ready to go"), built upon such a solid foundation where shortcuts that afflict other distributions haven't been taken, is truly an achievement worthy of praise and respect.
In short, knoppix already rocked, and now they have surpassed themselves again! Very, very cool!
As if I needed another reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday October 14 2003, @12:59AM)
I'm wondering how difficult it is to setup. Is it as easy as the poster made it sound?
Re:As if I needed another reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How'd you boot the clients? (Score:4, Informative)
Instant Beowulf Cluster (Score:1, Funny)
Awesome... (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Thursday December 12 2002, @03:43PM)
Re:Awesome... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 27 2003, @02:48PM)
Say this three times fast (Score:2, Funny)
(http://anti-dmca.org/)
Heh (Score:4, Funny)
(http://arvindn.livejournal.com/ | Last Journal: Monday June 16 2003, @12:39AM)
mirrors needed! (Score:2, Interesting)
All I have to say is.. <voice actor="nelson">Ha ha!</voice>
Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday August 29 2003, @12:36PM)
That's what they said about "Peter Framptom Comes Live" too.
There can only be one ultimate!
Terminals vs Licenses (Score:1, Funny)
(http://www.regionalservers.com/)
clusterKnoppix Mirrors (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.openmosixview.com/cluster
for a crappy yet less bloaty altenative, check out PlumpOS: http://plumpos.sourceforge.net/
Re:clusterKnoppix Mirrors (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://madsoftware.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 18 2003, @03:00PM)
The name needs adjustment (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 29, @08:33AM)
I would have chosen Kloppix...the "l" for cluster, the rest is self-explanitory.
Minimum hardware? (Score:4, Interesting)
That suddenly makes for a VERY cheap grid node. (Didn't want to use the "B" word
bittorrent (Score:2, Informative)
Applications I could run? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 03 2004, @05:38PM)
Re:Applications I could run? (Score:4, Informative)
With the experimental DSM patches being developed, Apache even runs, but most things like databases and web servers generally don't because they depend on shared memory to work, and shared memory on a cluster is a difficult thing to provide if oyu want any kind of performance.
Arghhh (Score:2)
I should give this a shot (Score:2, Offtopic)
The contura Aero is particulary annoying because of it's use of a Pcmcia floppy drive, and only 1 type II slot. For those unfamilar, it's not like you can hot swap the floppy and have it still work or anything useful like that.
For me it's either the laptop or a old net terminal for telnet fuctionality, and the laptop takes up less space.
hmmm. game servers? (Score:1)
anyone know enough to talk about this?
ObVMSPost (Score:1, Interesting)
Linux must stop trying to be like Windows. The lack of Unix sysadmins that made dumbed-down Windows NT the choice for small businesses in the mid-90s is no longer a problem, and companies need only worry about functionality rather than whether their sysadmin is competent enough to set up by any other method than point-and-click (or fit-and-forget).
Linux's enterprise respectability (and I mean real enterprise, not 20-employee small office) would come from "innovating" from such systems as VMS, not Windows.
OK, really dumb question here... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://knoppixquake.webhop.net/)
"openMosix terminal server" - uses PXE, DHCP and tftp to boot linux clients via the network. No CDrom drive/harddisk/floppy needed for the clients
How do the clients work if no CDrom/HD/Floppy is needed? I am trying to wrap my brain around this one. I get the cluster server idea, but then does the server determine which clients on the network will boot into the cluster? Is it via DHCP? Doesn't there need to be *something* on the client side like a HD/floppy/CDrom so it can boot?
Re:OK, really dumb question here... (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, the NIC makes a DHCP (or BOOTP) request for an IP address. The DHCP protocol allows the server to return the address of a TFTP (Trivial FTP) server along with the IP address for the client. The client contacts the TFTP server to get a kernel (vmlinuz), and then boots directly into that. From there, the kernel should be configured to mount its filesystems over NFS, and finish the boot process. I'm sure Google can point you to a more complete explanation.
What makes ClusterKnoppix so cool is that it's usually a huge pain to set up a TFTP/DHCP/NFS server correctly for multiple clients. ClusterKnoppix does it all for you, so all you need are some (really) "dumb" clients and all the heavy lifting is done for you.
It should speed up my SETI@home contributions (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.silviucc.home.ro/)
really needs to be said (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm.... (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://sharpy.xox.pl/ | Last Journal: Wednesday September 14 2005, @02:12PM)
A much better name (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://matts.org/)
I would propose the moniker "Cloppix"
Brings to mind images of a certain powerful one eyed giant...
Easy bake clusters (Score:1)
'1 tablespoon Knoppix, 3 lbs unprocessed x86 hardware'
Knoppix (Score:5, Interesting)
It probably would have done so even if any of my latest machines had a floppy drive
I really want to understand... (Score:2, Insightful)
As Louis Armstrong once said (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://knoppixquake.webhop.net/)
You ain't from around these parts, are you? :-)
In all seriousness though, I do think that your MCSE and your Windows environment is limiting you here. I actually think the MCSE should be changed to CMSE, because you are a Certified Microsoft System Engineer. You are taught how to admin Microsoft systems only. It's OK, those are necessary things. But the problem is that you have been taught how to think in a "Microsoft world". There is a lot outside that world. Clustered computing is one of them. A bootable distro (ala Knoppix and others) is another.
I am sure when the bootable floppy distro came out, the MCSE's cried "what would I do with THAT?". Then CDRWs came about, and the bootable floppy turned into the bootable CD distro. The MS crowd said "Neat. Big deal." That has now turned into a bootable cluster server. Who knows where it might go from here. At some point, someone at Microsoft will say(or has already said) "Hey, that is cool. Can we do that?". They will try to buy the technology, and will find it can't be done. And they will try to build it from scratch, and there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
I think it was Louis Armstrong, who when asked what Jazz is, said "Man, if you gotta ask, you'll never know." I am afraid that applies here.
Re:I really want to understand... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://supernicety.com/)
I'll try to give you an actual response. People have been quick to mention Knoppix CD's for rescue operations -- this doesn't apply to the Clustering feature, just knoppix in general. I used one of these last night to fix my roommate's system which had gotten totally owned and was halting at LILO. Could i have done it with a floppy based linux distro? Probly, but it would've been a bigger pain, because the floppy is small and may not have the tools i need, whereas a CD is big enough to have damn near everything.
That being out of the way - some uses for the cluster disks.
1. say your server (using ClusterKnoppix), which has a hard disk and lots of ram, etc, runs a really dynamic web site which needs lots of CPU. If you see that you're getting shitload of connections you take some other systems that aren't critical, pop in a CD and reboot and add their processors to the pool to help out the web server
2. as has been mentioned, in academic institutions, you could use this to harness the computers down the hall in the public lab for experiments overnight...
3. i don't today, but someday i may need a cluster, and why make it difficult if i can pop a CD in 6 LAN systems and get it going rather than spending a week on configuration. Shit, i've had occasions where my computer was compiling for 3 days straight... would've been nice to fire up a couple of secondary systems to help out...
i suppose you could call these contrived examples, but they're not wholly unrealistic. i think what you're getting at is, "why should normal people care?" which is a good question. is this useful for 90% of computer users? fuck no. 1%? Maybe. it solves the problem of running a cluster which can be simply and arbitrarily resized (keyword simply). If you have no need for a cluster, then you certainly don't care about a resizable one.
keep in mind though, that lots of things can be cool without being useful to yourself. i have no need for a supercomputer, but i still think they're pretty interesting and cool. i think this is a cool technology too, useful for a certain class of problem, and a limited set of users.
that's my 57 yen... for what it's worth.
bittorrent up (Score:5, Informative)
(also added to the main clusterknoppix website)
BITTORRENT UP! (Score:2, Informative)
Let me see if I understand this (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.gemstate.net/friends | Last Journal: Tuesday September 11, @10:32AM)
So all of the users have some of all of the power of the Mosix cluster?
This could be very very cool. Imagine a whole campus of users running this. Each user would have access to a super computer.
I just wonder how well mosix handles nodes dropping off and back on again. Plus how well will can is scale? Could you have five hundred or a thousand systems off in the cluster. Where is Mr. Barr when you need him?
Re:Let me see if I understand this (Score:5, Informative)
> up with this become a mosix cluster?
an openMosix cluster, not a mosix cluster.
>Then all the users are terminals off of this cluster?
if you want, yes.
> So all of the users have some of all of the power of the
> Mosix cluster?
yes
> I just wonder how well mosix handles nodes dropping
> off and back on again.
if a node goes down for a small time, and then comes back, no problem. if a node goes down for a time long enough to finish his work, processes won't come back where they came from, so you (or your apps or scripts) have to take care of this situation. tipically in a cluster you don't want nodes to go down, never. this can be a situation tipical in a pc laboratory or the like, for an entire campus this probably is not adequate, you need something more "grid computing aware"
>Plus how well will can is scale?
it depends a lot on the speed of the connection between nodes, on the type and amount of traffic generated and so on the type of computation being made, on the number of nodes, on the speed of the clients, etc...
>Could you have five hundred or a thousand systems off in the cluster.
tecnically up to 65535 nodes (last 2 bytes of ipv4 address) if i'm not wrong. i was told biggest cluster of this types count 1-2k nodes, but i'm not sure.
Computer Lab? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
* "openMosix terminal server" - uses PXE, DHCP and tftp to boot linux clients via the network.
No CDrom drive/harddisk/floppy needed for the clients
* openMosix autodiscovery - new nodes automatically join the cluster (no configuration needed)
* Clustermanagement tools - openMosix userland/openMosixview
* Every node has rootaccess to every other node via ssh/RSAkeys
* MFS/dfsa support
* Every node can run full blown X (PC-room/demo setup) or console only (more memory available)
Aside from the "every node has root access" bit, am I way out in left field thinking that this would make a good computer lab system? Just start up the clients and they pull from the Knoppix central server and you're done. No need to have floppies, or even to bother locking down a system. The student does something screwy to the PC, hit reset and you're back to fresh configuration.
Or am I missing something completely here?
Re:Computer Lab? (Score:4, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/dev/null | Last Journal: Tuesday October 23 2001, @07:44PM)
Well, yes, you're missing an equally important point that it is a cluster. X diskless workstations are part of this system but making those X workstations part of a Mosix cluster is what makes this setup interesting.
Overhead vs. performance boost? (Score:1)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Cool (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Friday December 01 2006, @10:51AM)
Clusters are a bit overhyped (Score:1, Insightful)
Will make "terminal" setups simple (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/~nurb432/ | Last Journal: Friday August 27 2004, @03:24PM)
Plus you get mosix tossed in for good measure..
Impressive on first glance.. i know what ill be doing saturday
"geek-kit" michael? (Score:1)
(http://www.scosol.org/)
where i keep my long-expired condoms and my 12-sided die?
Useful (Score:3, Funny)
(Last Journal: Sunday January 11 2004, @03:55AM)
For those times when you have to prove that you are absolutely, positively the biggest nerd at the party.
I need only one extra feature (Score:1)
In Soviet Russia (Score:1)
Re:Come on, I know you're out there (Score:1, Offtopic)
(http://www.frontrowcrew.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday June 16 2004, @09:55AM)
The best distro ever is functional AND simple to install.
SIMPLE to INSTALL.
Re:Imagine... (Score:1)
Mods please moderate down (Score:1)
Re:Someone is slipping on the job! (Score:2)
Duh..
Re:BitTorrent = SHIT and still not legal anyway (Score:3, Informative)