Arch Linux

wsduvall

Member

From: Blacksburg

Registered: 2009-02-05

Posts: 54

Website

Cluster under Arch

Hey guys,

I've got a couple older computers (P4's and the like) and some other machines, and I want to build a cluster. I have a lot of experience with arch and linux in general although I'm studying physics and math not cs.

So here's what I've got so far. I have IBM eServer xSeries 335 which will be my worldly node. I've got a gigabit ethernet LAN set up, and I'm using one of my machines as a middlebox as well (which is another matter all together ). The cluster is going to be MPI2 based, but I'm also setting up distcc to compiler code faster. For more information, see my site http://www.amenrecluster.com

I've gotten MPI2 up and running, but I'm having one issue. Everytime I add a node or update a config file, I have to do it on all my machines. Its quite a pain, and if I get a few more nodes, it will become very time consuming. I've though about using NFS to share certain config files, but I'm not really sure how to do this. I was thinking about using ROCKS as a model, but its proved to be quite complicated.

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My 5 node 9 CPU cluster: www.amenrecluster.com
OS: Arch Linux
Machines:Fujitsu T4210 and IBM eServer xSeries 335

evilgold

Member

Registered: 2008-10-30

Posts: 120

Re: Cluster under Arch

I havnt done anything like this myself, but i've been wanting to try for a while.

You could have use NFS to mount /etc/ or whatever config directories you need.  You could also use rsync to keep specific files or directories up to date, depending on how often you update things.

Back2Cali

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2006-02-26

Posts: 223

Re: Cluster under Arch

Hi!

I'm not very familiar with load balanced clusters (yet). I did some things with high-availability clusters a while ago. So maybe DRBD and Heartbeat will be interesting for you.
I'm working on some project and next thing we do is moving from a high-availability cluster to a load-balanced HA-cluster. Unfortunately it'll all be Ubuntu based but this should not matter (I suggested to use Arch but the Project started with Debian and moved to Debian/Ubuntu hybrid so nobody wants to do the work to port all scripts to the arch specific settings. Since there are not enough people working on the project at the moment, I cannot take some time to do the porting.... ). Anyway, you might want to take a look at it. If I have some news about the load balanced cluster we're building, I'll let you know!

BYE

tkdfighter

Member

From: Switzerland

Registered: 2009-01-28

Posts: 126

Re: Cluster under Arch

Have you thought of using a cluster filesystem like GFS? Of course you'd need to have some type of direct connection to the disk. You could also use iSCSI, although this would not be the most elegant solution to your problem.