FreeBSD Cluster At Purdue

luddite writes: "Two guys at Purdue University have assmbled a FreeBSD based cluster built cheap - very cheap. With under $2500 spent on the cluster, it's one sweet set-up. Just shows that if you take the time and put some effort into something, money doesn't have to limit your resources! The site also goes into some detail about what the cluster is made of, where they found the parts, how it's been configured, and what they plan to use it for."

YABC (Yet Another Beowulf Cluster)

Despite the synicism of the subject, its nice to see a beowulf cluster on Slashdot which doesn't use Linux. It helps to remind people that Beowulf != Cluster of linux boxes. After all the definition of a beowulf is
It's a kind of high-performance massively parallel computer built primarily out of commodity hardware components, running a free-software operating system like Linux or FreeBSD, interconnected by a private high-speed network.

http://www.dnaco.net/~kragen/beowulf-faq.txt

Re:University Advantage.

First, realize that the machines they are talking about are Pentium (not PII/III) class machines. Thus, they require SIMMs, not DIMM memory. This is why they're using K6/2-500s and the like--they run in Socket 7 mainboards (albeit only at 66MHz memory bus). Memory like this is available quite cheaply.

Second, good quality motherboards are basically there for the salvage -- on the news page they mention a an ASUS P55T2P4, which is, I believe, a 430HX board. But there's a big integer compute difference when it's outfitted w/ a 500MHz K6/2 vs the (likely) P133 that used to be sitting there.

Thirdly, they mention that the machines are outfitted with at least 32MB of memory. This is not 128MB. You don't need 128MB to do a lot of tasks on either *BSD or Linux -- as long as you're doing things that have a <32MB resident set, you're going to be fine on either. FreeBSD is particularly good in low memory situations (its swap performance is better than Linux in my experience), but i'm pretty sure that this isn't important, because they are looking for big integer performance first and foremost. Otherwise, they're probably better served with fewer, faster nodes w/ K7s or PII/IIIs.

Note that the machines have local HDs, so they can do local swap -- they don't need to keep shells, etc. swapped in over a network drive, either.

So this sounds good, for the right task. there are obviously a bunch of tasks that would be better served by other styles of clusters, or other resource allocations, but for doing fast integer calculation on the super-cheap, this is a great way to go.

Re:FreeBSD v. Linux

Some excerpts from the FreeBSD vs. Linux page at http://www.futuresouth.com/~fullermd/freebsd/bsdvl in.html page:

Subject: Re: Why FreeBSD?

Any response to a question like this is bound to upset someone. I'll
answer with the caveat that this is my opinion that developed over the
past three years following them both as well as other commercial OSs.
Those of you offended in any way by this, please cat flames > /dev/null.

That said -- the differences between FreeBSD and Linux can best be
understood in the context of American politics. There are essentially two
philosophies: Republican (FreeBSD) and Democrat (Linux).

The FreeBSD organization is a republican structure -- we have our say as
users, but the final decisions devolve to the core team who take the final
responsibility for their decisions. FreeBSD takes a conservative approach.
In other words, better things should work correctly at the expense of a
minorities desires, than to please all of the people all of the time and
have unexpected components of the OS breaking on a regular basis. We are
free to vote our approval or disapproval by changing our OS.

Linux is a democratic group. There is no single authority to accept final
responsibility except for Linus as it relates to the kernel. Linux adopted
early on a consensus approach (POSIX, etc.). In a sense, Linux is much
like current Democratic politics -- the mob pretty much rules. The end
result is that there is really no such thing as Linux -- there are
distributions that use the Linux kernel and from then on you have
essentially different operating systems. Slackware, for example, doesn't
look at all like Red Hat. Describing Linux is much like describing Mach.
(There isn't much - both are just micro kernels. _Anything_ can be
implemented over them.)

So as I see it, it comes down to this: vote for the philosophy that
appeals to you. I use FreeBSD because I rely on my machine for many other
uses besides tinkering with operating systems. FreeBSD doesn't change the
world on me every 6 months. Linux is in constant change. New things are
showing up all the time. If you like tinkering with operating systems and
having things that used to work break, Linux may be your answer. If you
don't know Unix -- pick one and get started. You'll learn how to pick the
best choice. No matter which one you pick, it will be infinitely better
that Micros**t anything.

Enjoy.

-- Jay

----------
Subject: Re: Why FreeBSD?

And the clouds parted on 21 Mar 97, and Jeff Roberts
said:

>On Fri, 21 Mar 1997, Bob Dole wrote:
>
>> Hi, I plan on changing to UNIX and I wonder wether I should take Linux or
>> FreeBSD...
>> Both seem to be an excellent choice, so you can't say one is better than
>> the other. But in what are they different, in what is each specialized?
>

Then try them both: they're both "free", but you'll have to pay something
for you Internet connection or CDROM distribution, depending on your
circumstances. The following is not impartial, as I don't play with Linux
much, but when I did I wasn't as happy as I am now 8).

[opinions on]

Linux is SysV-flavored (barely); FreeBSD is BSD-flavored (definitely).

Linux's kernel is authored by one person (Linus Torvalds); FreeBSD is
authored by (essentially) the core team.

Linux addons come from pretty much everywhere; FreeBSD's get submitted from
a lot of places also, but have to pass review to be included as part of the
release.

Linux has multiple releases (based on who's packaging), all somewhat
different from each other, and somewhat inoperative as well. There's only
one release to FreeBSD (per major version)

Linux tends to be more cutting-edge and trendy, and tends to work with more
hardware (to some degree), partly because of the "arrangements" made with
vendors. FreeBSD requires that source code be freely obtainable for
(nearly?) all it's parts, which scares some vendors into not cooperating,
or at least not as well. The hardware that _is_ supported tends to be done
pretty robustly.

Linux is snappier for low-user-count systems, depending on what you're
trying to do. FreeBSD tends to shine under real load (like WWW/FTP
servers), and I don't really know if any major sites base such Internet
services on Linux; quite a few seem to be using FreeBSD, particularly
Walnut Creek CDROM, which carries quite a load on a consistent basis.

There are far more books on Linux than FreeBSD per se, something I draw no
conclusions on.

The support on the Linux list(s) is something I haven't any personal
experience with; the support on the FreeBSD lists is exemplary.

[opinions off]

Please correct any sins of commission and ommission you find above; I don't
do this often enough to be any good at it.

your mileage may vary, and best wishes,
larry

--------
Subject: linux vs freebsd testimonial

A few weeks ago, my single linux box fried. I replaced both the hard
drive (with an identicle one) and linux with freebsd 2.1.5.

The machine runs majordomo, ftp, apache, and an irc server.

The performance is way up there! Under linux it would frequently slug
down to a crawl. under FreeBSD it just keeps zipping along.

There is a very definite noticable difference in response and load
handling.
-------
ubject: Re: linux vs freebsd testimonial

Since we've gotten along fairly well in our migration from Linux, I
thought I'd share my experiences as well...

We currently run on FBSD:

1 Shell/user www (was NetBSD 1.0)
1 DNS/mail/dialup auth/syslog (these two are sharing mail spool over NFS)
1 utility/backup/freebies
1 DNS/mail for seperate, wacky project
2 virt www servers (3 are still Linux)
2 co-locate www servers (www.firstview.com 3.6G/day, www.villagevoice.com)

These have been the most trouble-free machines we've worked with. Some of
the recent security problems were a bit tough (lots of cvsup-ing), but
nothing compared to the nasty Slackware Linux Bug-o-the-month. The only
reboots *any* of these machines have seen were intentional, which is
something I just can't say about Linux. Performance is much better, and
the "out of box" configuration is a lot more sensible than Slackware. A
few of these machines really get beat on hard, and they just ask for more.

We have to keep one Linux web server for compatibility with some odd
sourceless C cgi's, but the other two will be history soon. Our news
server is running Linux, but it's being replaced with a machine to be
named "fridge" which will have 3 SCSI busses and 15 drives, and of course
be running FBSD.

I must say, this has made my job much easier. Linux is just too
unpredictable when you don't have the time to play the
"kernel-of-the-week" game. One of the Linux boxes still does the routine
of freezing with no log entries or other hints; which is extremely
frustrating. FBSD just seems like it was meant to be in a production
environment...

Thanks to all involved,
-------