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Mandrake Announces Turn-Key Clustering Distribution
joestar writes "According to their website, Mandrake and partners (Bull, INPG/INRIA...) have launched an 'easy-to-deploy easy-to-use Linux Clustering solution,' that has already been tested on a 40-node cluster. Of course, it's published under the GPL, comes with parallel applications, and is available for download as an ISO. It seems the project is financed by French government. It's great because I've always dreamed of having my own supercomputer at home."
Gotcha!
Hardware restrictions
A fast ethernet network switch
NO SCSI drives in nodes
A PXE bootable network card (intel / 3com)
A 3D accelerated video card for the virtual reality 3D engine
Seems a bit limiting - no SCSI drives?
Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these things?
OH WAIT! I CAN!
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
1. This one is nromal.
- Phase 1: Develop and release a specialized Linux distribution that contains everything needed to quickly deploy a ready-to-run cluster.
2. I think this means ?????
- Phase 2 (early 2003): Release of specialized administration, control and monitoring tools for the clustering solution, plus added support for Itanium 2 architecture.
3. And finally, PROFIT!!!!!
- Phase 3 (end of 2003): Release of specialized tools and applications for development in parallel environment, final integration and tests, release of the final stable version.
I always figured the problem with a home supercomputer would be the electric bill. Am I wrong about that?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
If it was financed by the French government, does this mean that Mandrake is going to become the Renault of the Linux world? Eww...
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Great, now with my 15 386/486 systems sitting in the garage I can create something almost as powerful as this laptop I am currently using.
Good. I hope this will convince CEOs in large companies that Linux clusters and scales better than Windows (well, that's obvious) or proprietary Unices. But the penguins can't be too confident, as Sun is up to no good here, hawking distributed clustering as a brand new technology when it certainly isn't, and catering to Fortune 500s and other large companies.
If we want to make our inroads we must do so now.
"I am root. Bow before me." To this I say, "You are root, and you bear the sins of the world upon your shoulders."
I recently acquired 30 PCs in the Pentium-II range from a local community college, for free, as they were actually headed for the landfill.
Just as a weekend project, I was going to use the Beowulf software, but this CLIC software looks quite interesting, considering it's a total package and probably comes with the ease of use of Mandrake, so I'm going to give it a try.
All I have to do is get the PCs out of the shed, make a lot of CAT5 cables, format quite a few hd's with CLIC, and build my own Beo^H^H^HCLIC cluster out of crappy Pentium II's and do something stupid like calculate PI to a googol digits, even though my power bill will probably be insane.
Wish me luck, I'll keep you posted!
Why, for the love of god, why must you idiots always mention "a beowulf cluster". There should be an automated system to mod any post to -1 that contains the word beowulf.
"A BEOWULF CLUSTER!! (Score:-1, FUCKING RETARDED)"
I'm helping to adminstrate a cluster here in Youngstown, Ohio thats partially funded by the Ohio Supercomputer Center. As a result of the few things I've picked up, I've gotten it into my head that I'm building a P1 cluster of my own, at home, over the summer. One of the OSC guys has a small(4-5 machines) P2 cluster in his office...its really not extremely difficult...except that I'm using P1's(cause i can get them for far less money). OSC has fairly well automated the install process for anything 686 and above. Using 586's means having to do most things manually. And before someone points it out, yes i'm aware i'm not gonna get a whole lotta power here...i'm doing it as a learning experience, right now noone is going to let me serup a cluster all on my own, so this is the best way for me to learn it i think. Incidentally, one of the things i want to try next is getting GUI desktop-type programs to distribute across my P1 cluster. The idea is to take all of these old systems, and get comparable functionality out of them as you get from your typical desktop computer. I really hare seeing how many systems end up tossed in the trash, i feel like something like this could prove helpful in eliminating some waste. Of course it could also just be a lot of hard work for nothing. Guess i'll find out this summer!
once you go slack, you never go back
How the hell is the very first response to the article redundant? HOW!? PLEASE TELL ME HOW!
So I guess when you do something wrong it will tell you things like: "I fart in your general direction..." and most importantly "go away or I will taunt you a second time".
Now I can put those 8 486's to work and roughly have the power of a P2-300mhz and lower my heating bill all at once!
Imagine a beowolf cluster of these!!! ;-)
:-)
Seriously though. How cool is Mandrake? First to LSB, full GPL'd version of cd avail for download (damn you SuSE!!), lots of freebies, like the Single network firewall and the old Corporate server(i loved this back in the day), their prosuite stomps any other distro (and for $135 without doc's!), oh and mandrake runs on XBox!!
Now a cluster??
My only complaint is they are an RPM-based distro and I like apt-get. Something like the freebsd ports collection would be nice too though, but i just hate those rpm's.
Just so you don't think I'm a linux leech I have bought 3 version of linux inlcuding mandrakes prosuite, i can't donate code but i can donate ca$h.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Mandrake? Surely you're confusing Mandrake with the US DOJ?
Wouldn't a LTSP+mosix cluster do the same thing without having to touch the hard drives?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
One could argue that those businesses that really need a cluster will likely buy one preconfigured. Those that do the preconfiguration probably have an established technique (distro, tools, etc.) and won't likely go for something from Mandrake. The hobbiest who builds one to learn about clusters more than likely wants to do everything himself (like start with a strip down install of slackware and build it up from there). That really only leaves the hobbiest that wants to do parallel programming but doesn't want to build the cluster. Not a very large segment.
End of Line.
b) [Some Beowulf joke or another]
I wonder if there's a multi-threaded Folding client......
Why? Just run one app per processor. I do this on my NT box. Just make sure you configure it right.
Check it out: Rocksclusters
Does MPI/LAM run on it?
I'm on the mailing list of this project and there was a parallel feature for urpmi that really rox !
This tool allow people to deploy RPMS to a group of linux hosts using an intelligent parallel copy.
How does it works:
You create a group of hosts so the server can ask the nodes (using urpmi) to prepare for an update/install of packages.
Each computer tell the server the packages it needs then the server copy in parallel (using ka-tools) the rpms on the nodes (that's very fast even for a hudge number of nodes).After that, nodes update their system using local rpms !
This feature seems to be designed for clusters but should be used by admins !
Another point of comparaison between urpmi & apt-get
I have lately started being more and more convinced that one of the key issues to success of open source - in a business sense, will be the fact that it is much easier for government organizations and other similar-type organizations to fund them without being guestioned and having put their moral in doubt. Why? Every single time that Microsoft, Adobe or some other closed source company is looking for government money, the politicians are facing a rather guestion: "In what light will this put us?"
Now, it would be interesting to see some years further and see how this all changes. I am convinced that there will much more public discussion on the subject whether this is discrimative against the non-open source companies. In my opinion it basicly is not, because being open source, it benefits everyone and not just a single company - but still, there's still someone who benefits most.
Right. Netware 6 has kick-ass "clustering" that allows a Server to go down, and a 2nd server to beome your file server. You can stream a video (from FILE), down a server, and after a second, your stream will continue - from the 2nd server.
Most of us call that failover, but Microsoft and Novell are calling it clustering.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Finally a Beowolf cluster easy enough to build for everyone saying "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these..."
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Now they need to let Mandrake Club members pool their resources to create an internet wide cluster for all Mandrake users. Join the club, get to play on the club cluster.
I don't know what the hell I would use it for / get out of it, but it would be a nice way to support your favorite distro by donating unused cpu time to MCC (Mandrake Club Cluster)
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
I don't get it, why isn't it easy to obtain computers? You just buy them - it's not like they are rare.
sic transit gloria mundi
That's the problem with the economy right now... there are too many of these government financed open source projects. How can we expect the markets to operate properly, products to sell, and jobs to be created, when communists like the French keep putting out competing products like this? Or those communists at the NSA, working on "secure Linux" when Microsoft had a perfectly good C4 security clearance for Win NT 4?
Fnord.
I can see it now. Microsoft continues to loose money due to the fact people are buying up XBoxes and modding them to run this.
Bill: What's going on here. Sales of the XBox have risen 500%, but I'm making no money because no one's buying software!!
MS Lackey: It's the French, sir.
Bill: What?! How so?
MS Lackey: Those Mandrake linux people released an ISO image of linux for the XBox, sir, and then they released clustering software. XBox supercomputing clusters are now springing up all over the place.
Bill: Quickly, we must couteract this. Launch a shared source initiative, and I want the records showing everyone who has puchased an XBOX without buying any games for it!
MS Lackey: Right away, sir.
Bill: Oh, and while you're at it, buy France, jail the government, and burn down the Mandrake offices. That'll teach them.
Mandrake is compiled for i586, so you're gonna have to at least drop a pentium in to those old mobos...
put the what in the where?
I think you're all missing the most important question. When are we going to see video games for super clusters?
So, what kind of HA (High-Availability) or Failover turnkey clusters are available for Linux? I'm curious, not trolling... I'd love to get one. I know Red Hat Advanced Server does it, and there are some projects out. (SuperMonkey? LVS?)
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
This is a freebie from the French governement really. They hired MandrakeSoft to create it for them, and MandrakeSoft turned around and said something along the lines of "You realize we're going to give this to everyone to play with and use don't you?" To which the French government replied "I don't care, I'm not gonna sell the thing, I just need it for virtual weapons testing, did i say weapons testing, I meant happy camps."
So Mandrake didn't really do this to make more money off it, they're already getting paid for it, we just get a nice new toy to play with.
put the what in the where?
yes, they're better off, because you don't need to do jack on the computational nodes.
/home is mounted via nfs from a disk array, so each individual node has access to the users' programs. we use fast ethernet for that, since it doesn't put that much strain on the network, and myrinet for the computational nodes to exchange data.
no, they're not better off, because where is your swap going to be? or temporary data generated by individual jobs?
i run a 100 node computational cluster. the nodes boot with pxe, then if they are already installed, they simply boot to their local scsi drives. only
i've had more problems with ram and myrinet than the 'moving parts', aka drives.
--- d'oh
I am SO in agreement with you here. I wiped Gentoo1.3 last month to try Mandrake9 -- more or less just to see what it was like. I won't have a spare weekend to put Gentoo1.4 back on this box for two weeks so until then I just have to suffer.
I can't wait to go back because each and every time I have tried to compile something nifty the process has failed because due to irresolvable dependency issues. This is what originally pushed me over to Gentoo from Mdk8.2, and once again I'm being pushed back.
Mandrake is, like all the "latest and greatest" attempts at being a simple install (e.g., lindows, lycoris, redhat, xandros, etc.) FANTASTIC so long as you never plan on using anything not included in the distro, and never plan on upgrading any software package.
That's fine for an office worker I suppose, but given the choice I'll take Debian or Gentoo any day. At least I know that when I get return to Gentoo when I type configure/make/make install I won't have to start crying!
Is it a gaggle or a flock?
And yes I'm happy we can finally tell the guys who ask "Can you imagine a cluster of these?" to shut up and build it.
To do what? File Serving? SQL Server?
I believe NFS is 'HA', and I believe Postgres SQL would also be HA. There are also Linux-based load balancers available, so if you wanted to do something as simple as have 2 servers with static web pages, the load balancer would NAT those two systems, and direct requests to whatever one had the lowest load. That includes being completely down too :)
One nifty HA application is Email. Take a look at Matt Simersons FreeBSD email toaster (The Same apps are available on Linux) for a way to setup a HA Email cluster. It describes one system, but add NFS and MySQL replication, and you have HA.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I've got machines all over the place, and have long fantasized about setting up a cluster for the fun of it. I've read a little about Beowulf and one or two other open source clustering technologies, but have never had the gumption to crack the books and set one up. Mostly, I think, because I'm not sure what I'd do with it when it was ready.
Would anyone care to post a 2-3 paragraph summary of what Joe PC Hobbyist (e.g. someone like me, with many semi-obsolete PCs lying around the house) might be able to do with the CLIC software? Would it only be able to run applications written for CLIC (oh.), or would the cluster behave like one giant, amalgamated Mandrake box (cool!) ?
I've seen a lot of people comment on how much energy this would use, but no real numbers. I know it's subjective as to where you live, but generally, how much energy does a computer use? How much would this use?
From the command line, urpmi will give you similar functionality (mainly deal with the dependencies for you). And even nicer, the GUI for Software Management in MandrakeControlCenter is just beautifull. Really painless software management, as long as you install software from the installation CDs or urpmi-aware repositories. Security updates are just a few clicks away and you get to see the advisories and decide what you want to install and what you don't. When installing from CD's you are prompted to insert the CD's in the order they are needed. You can search for packages (in names, files and descriptions). I NEVER had any problems, never had to manually solve dependencies (with ML 9.0). It works like a charm ...
Now all of those crap boxes that "walked home with me" from last tech job will be put to use. This is remarkable to me, I had no idea that such a project was in the works. A question though, do you think that this little freebie from Mandrake and the French Government will affect the profits of a company like Linux NetworX or the use of Beowulf?
You will need:
- RedHat 7.3
- openmosix-kernel-2.4.18-openmosix3.i686.rpm
- openmosix-tools-0.2.4-1.i386.rpm
- openMosixUserland-0.2.4.tgz
- openMosix-2.4.18-4.gz
- 2.4.18 kernel source installed in
/usr/src/linux/
Then:We really need your help
http://www.gofundme.com/help-sherry
the load balancer would NAT those two systems,
Of course you would need at least two loadbalancers to. Available here.
http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/
The stuff you can do with these kernel patches cost about $1000 for a hardware solution. And more if you want failover.
So uh, get a playstation 2. Or a G4. Ha ha.
You know clustering has been around for a god damned long time, and (low end) PCs have been cheap for a less long but still considerable amount of time. You could have built yourself something decent a couple years ago.
If this is the answer you've been waiting for all this time, I'm not sure I want to know what the question was.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In the longer term, set up all the desktops in your orkplace wth this Mandrake distro and use it for storage (Aka freenet) as well as processing, nothing unique to any particular desktop so you can add/delete from the LAN at will.
But more immediately;
So how about combininng all the no-fuss PVM setup stuff with the Gibraltar bootbale Debian CD?
OK, maybe not as neat as PXE, but imagine being able to convert the office LAN into a Beowulf cluster every night when people go home.:o)
Xix.
P.S. Anyone notice how many more new ideas are popping up compared to "clone product X" ideas?
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Awesome! Just when I was about to declare Red Hat the winner, Mandrake comes up with a "cluster in a can". Great news.