penguin_nipple's Journal: Beowulf Update

Ok, yesterday recieved the DB50M to DB68M external SCSI cable which will interface with the Seagate ST-39216W 10gig SCSI UW Drive I managed to find for 150 bucks. So installation looks good so far. I am currently working on the gateway node untill my purchase orders come in from the school for my 16 port switch and 21 cables. The pisser of this whole operation is the fact that everyone pretty much seems to think that this project is neither research nor serious.

I may appear to enjoy this operation, which I do, it's frikking fun. However there are serious groups doing parallel computing research although everytime one of the 'smart people' talks to me about it, i get this condescending attitude regarding a beowulf cluster. Now remember these are people with PhD's in computer science and some of them even specialize in distributed and parallel computing.

It should be reiterated that my university is tiny and the program here kinda..well....sucks...

The entire place has become a Microsoft Point and Click program. Which is so so sad. But anyhow, I could rant on this for many many pages. But what's the point?

I am in the process of apt-getting my debian stuff. Once the base system is up and running, then I'll grab some new kernel sources and do some patching of the source for beta-unstable stuff and give recompiling a shot. I am also going to figure out how to controlled the 4 video cards in the SUN bios. I want the default to be the sweet TurboGX video board, currently its the crappy default SUN card thats on the board. Oh well, again, later. But I think I might grab the XFree 4.2.0 source and do a build from source. Heck, maybe I'll figure out how to package the silly thing...