# Cluster Computer

## oregonskater

Hi, I'm currently trying to create a cluster computer for the lab I'm working for using the gentoo platform.  I'm pretty new at this stuff and am feeling really crushed under the task.   Does anyone know what I should be doing or have any information to help me get started?

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## NeddySeagoon

oregonskater,

There are several ways to do clustering, depending on what you want achieve. Google for the Beowulf HOWTO. 

Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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## oregonskater

I need to get a couple other computers to boot first off my main computer.  These other computers are mainly just motherboards, no harddrives.  Will the info I need be on the beowulf site?

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## OdinsDream

Take a look at LinuxBIOS, a replacement BIOS for motherboards that boots directly to a linux kernel. This reduces loading time to mere seconds, and allows operation without a harddrive or floppy disk.

Otherwise, look into booting from the network, and possibly into a ramdrive of some sort. You'll probably need a floppy for this.

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## NeddySeagoon

oregonskater,

What you are describing now is a thin client. Check out the Linux Terminal Server Project. The clients boot over the network, eithier using a floppy to store the network boot PROM or network cards with boot PROMS.

There are various levels the 'thinness' from where the client is just a dumb terminal, or runs an X display but the server runs the apps through to the server being central storage but apps run locally.

Running clients into swapping is frowned on since swapping happens over the network.

Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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## someguy

he said he needs a cluster

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## Phlaegel

He said cluster, but seems to be describing thin clients booting over the network. Although, the description hasn't been all that clear so far...

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## oregonskater

Sorry, I am pretty unclear on my project as well.  I was just given the job two days ago and I have not worked with linux or unix in a couple years.  My boss says that its a cluster computer and that we are going to route probably about 8 other computers through this main computer that I am working on.  The connection is supposed to be over our ethernet line, but someone mentioned something about how we don't have a certain ethernet card to do a direct boot into them.  Thnus we are going to have to use a floppy disk to do the booting.  Thanks to all that have helped and are helping.

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## NeddySeagoon

oregonskater,

You could have have a cluster of thin clients if you wanted.

Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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## OdinsDream

Semantics aside, check out the work in this thread for some tips:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=54293

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## oregonskater

Sorry to keep on bothering, but I really am new at this.  I apparently have to setup the ethernet card connecting to the client computers.  How do I do this?

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## OdinsDream

Your question is unclear.

The idea is, each client has a network card, and then boots through one of several different ways.

1. Clients have a harddrive and a full distribution, then they mount some stuff on the Server

2. Clients boot from a floppydisk into a minimal system, which then talks to the Server

3. Clients have no floppy or harddrive, but instead have an EEPROM on the network card itself that's programmed to fetch the minimal system from the server, boot it, and load it into RAM.

There are, obviously, other options. I have no experience with any of them myself, so, I'm afraid I'm of little help besides simply giving you information on what I've seen around the forums so far. Good luck!

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## NeddySeagoon

oregonskater,

There are two ways to do this. The easy way - get the ready built bits from the Linux Terminal Server Project. This gives you all you need for thin clinets. You can use any distro you like for your bootp server.

The hard way. Start reading the Etherboot HOWTO, about booting over the network, compiling special kernels to mount root and swap via NFS. This is not a beginners project if you do it the hard way.

Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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## Kimo

Maybe you should check out openMosix - It does automatic process migration, etc...It's in portage

emerge search *mosix

Jamie

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## zhenlin

Go OpenMOSIX. Use Adelie Linux. (A few carefully placed words enables this hidden feature of Gentoo)

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## Phlaegel

oregonskater: If you haven't figured it out already, you're getting mixed advice here... zhenlin and Kimo are talking about clusters, while most others are talking about thin clients. Maybe definitions will help:

Cluster: A group of computers linked together to appear as one fast computer. Used for large amounts of data processing, 3d rendering, etc.

Thin Clients: A group of minimal computers, often without hard drives, which get all or most of their software from a central server. Useful as workstations that are easily controlled/updated/managed from the central server.

I get the impression that your boss just used the wrong word to describe what he wants, and he actually wants thin clients, not a cluster. If I'm just stating the obvious here, I apologize...

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## oregonskater

Ok now we're trying to configure this bootp file, but cannot find the bootp file at all.  We emerged it this afternoon, but found only two readme files and a log file, none of which seemed to help.  Could someone take this poor fool through the whole process of finding the config file, and then possibly how to configure it?    :Crying or Very sad:  Thanks so much.

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## NeddySeagoon

oregonskater,

Its difficult to point you in the right direction without knowing what hardware you have and what you want to achieve. The difference between thin clients and a cluster has been pointed out in this thread.

So, what hardare do you have?

What do you want to do (in terms of running software, providing services to user(s) etc?

Why do you think a cluster (or thin client set up) will solve your problem?

Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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## trjones4

I've just finished setting up a cluster for my company that relies on thin clients each running an optimized OpenMosix kernel for their architecture (we have a mixed environment of P3's and P4's).  All clients boot using Etherboot from a central server (also running an OpenMosix kernel).

There is some general info here:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=41171&highlight=openmosix

...and my coworker and I are working on a first draft of some documentation on how we did it. I'll be happy to post it this week if you are interested. But I agree with the others so far ... you'll need a good understanding of LTSP and OpenMosix to see if that's the route which is correct for your problem.

We're running very processor intensive jobs (not very disk intensive) and OM does a great job migrating the processes to the various nodes. However, in other situations systems like Beowulf might be more appropriate.

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## oregonskater

We're using a dell 600sc 1.8 Ghz with a 4 GB OS drive and a 200 GB RAID drive.   To that we are trying to connect several computers which do not have any harddrvies whatsoever so we can make use of their processor speed.  I work in a biochem/biophysics lab, so we need the parallel computing power to handle some heavy number crunching and data sequencing.  I hope this information helps.  Thanks to all of you who have helped me and trjones4 I would be very interested in said documentation even if it is out of my league.  We have some other guys around on the floor who aren't quite as absent minded towards linux as me.

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## NeddySeagoon

oregonskater,

I understand what you want - a cluster of thin clients.

The LTSP project will give you the thin clients but not the clustering.

It would be worth setting up one diskless workstation so that you can see whats involved in diskless booting, because if you can't get that to go nothing works.

Hopefully, your diskless machines are all the same processor type, so they can all share much of the client filesystem on the server.

You must have at least two of everything on the server. It needs its own set of filesystems. You will have one more set per client type too.

So, start with the LTSP project to get a feel for things

Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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## oregonskater

ok...we have the other computer on, but when we try to boot it with a floppy disk we get some weird error.  

NTLDR is missing

press any key to restart

Anyone know what is happening?

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## NeddySeagoon

oregonskater.

That PC used to have NT on it (NTLDR is the NT LoaDeR).

It must still have a hard drive because that message comes from the code on the Master Boot Record.

Check your boot order in the BIOS.

To boot the thin client from floppy you have to make a special Etherboot floppy, which essentially contains a special loader that calls  the same code as would live in the PROM on the Ethernet card but from the floppy.  This requires that you know what Ethernet card you have in that particulae thin client.

Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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## oregonskater

well we tried to do this etherboot load on, but this computer is just determined to keep on hating us.  We still get the same message despite booting from the floppy, and there is absolutely no harddrive on the computer.  Anyway, brain is crashing...please help.

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## zhenlin

Use dd if=/dev/zero on the floppy to clean it out, then install a ext2 filesystem on it... It may be a remnant of the NT bootsector.

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## oregonskater

ok, so we have the other computer booting and reading off the floppy boot.  But now its searching for the dhcp server, and does not appear to be finding it.  Does anyone have a copy of their dhcp.conf file or their in.tftpd file?  I have no clue what is going wrong....so eh.  Thanks for all the help   :Very Happy: 

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## oregonskater

Also, does anyone know how to setup the bootparams file?

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## gzhang27

Hey everyone. 

The Gentoo+OpenMosix+LTSP documentation is complete.  You can access it at http://www.techsburg.com/gentoo/docs/ltspdoc.html

Troy (trjones4) and I welcome any and all comments and questions regarding your experiences using the doc (as well as chocolates, flowers, and other such gifts.)  

Thank you,

Yingzhi Zhang

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## someguy

pretty soon im creating a gentoo cluster inside a phonebooth (like the blue aluminum casings for payphones) im putting 4 mini-itx machines in it one will dual boot windows/gentoo and have an agp card (for  gaming) its gunna b pimp when i get done with  it

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## oregonskater

sorry to keep bugging, but does anyone know the setup for the tftp config file?

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## oregonskater

Is there any possiblity of problems with not being able to mount the root directory for the client computer with some relation to NFS?

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## trjones4

At what point in the boot processes are you right now? If you've gotten the stock LTSP client kernel to boot, then I'd say you likely have a custom kernel config problem, but if you can post your client boot messages maybe we can figure it out. 

A good starting point is scrolling up the boot screen (SHIFT+Page UP - if it works) and seeing if the kernel image is at least being found (and NFS is working). If you've got the kernel image found, than the next big thing is creation of the initrd filesystem. 

Good luck ...

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## oregonskater

OK...so we've got everything kinda running, except now we're trying to load the second client up, and make it use the same file system as the first client, but keep coming up with an error where its unable to locate the nfs or something, and then it searches for some RPC code or something, I have no clue...any of this sound familiar to anyone?

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## trjones4

Well, it sounds like progress ... so you've got one client booting correctly from the server and now a second is bonking? I haven't run into to that one before. But, here are a couple questions:

1. Is the new client booting from the same kernel image as the first? If so, than

     it must be an nfs or dhcp problem.

2. Does the client boot first and then loose the nfs server? We had this happen a few

    times when the DHCP service had some conflicting IP/hostname info

3. Does the client obtain a valid IP and hostname from the DHCP server? - And, are 

    all the clients listed in the server /etc/hosts file and then copied to the /opt/lts/i386/etc/hosts file?

I know you've probably checked all this stuff already ... but those are a few things that come to mind.

Good luck .. keep us updated.

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