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Linux Clustering
Bookman emphasizes a central piece of wisdom that no system administrator should ignore: redundancy. In the case of high availability clusters, parts redundancy is the name of the game, but one should not forget the human component; no administrator should be caught with only a cell phone -- keep a pager just in case. However, in a post-modern turn that might seem brilliant if it were applied in a work of fiction rather than a technical book, the author seems to apply the concept of redundancy to the text itself.
That the book began not as a book but rather as a collection of talks or presentations, or some other smaller format, is evidenced by the repetition of information between chapters and sections. Such nearly poetic repetitions also occurs within sentences and paragraphs (e.g. "nightly backups each night" on page 25).
An editor never looked at Linux Clustering; the book had two "technical reviewers" but their contributions seemingly didn't include fixing mangled syntax and strained style. On page 14 in the second paragraph a large segment of a sentence from the previous page is pasted into another sentence, resulting in a nonsensical block of text. The number of hyphenation, syntax, word choice, and subject-verb agreement errors is atrocious and makes the book difficult to read.
Some of the misinformation in the text appears to be unintentional (but ignorance is no excuse for a UNIX systems administrator); some is due to the fact that the author deals only with old (2.2) kernels (though the book came out 18 months after the 2.4 kernel release), old versions of journaling filesystems, and old distributions; and yet other misinformation is the result of misplaced attempts at humor (such as stating that GNU stands for the Gateway Naming Utility; one can only hope that this was intended to be funny). Other jokes often misfire, but do point to the intended audience (consider, for example, the section heading "Space: The Final Frontier").
In the Introduction, the author indicates that the book should be read by "Linux enthusiasts and users who want to get a Linux cluster up and running with the least amount of fuss." The organization of the book will not, however, aid this enterprise, for there is little "how to" information provided, but rather a great deal of background information on compiling kernels, various types of journaling file systems, and RedHat's Kickstart (perhaps inappropriate considering that the book specifically states that basic information will not be covered). Another section or two deal with basic networking and security. Various types of clusters are discussed, as are a few of the types of clustering software (e.g. Condor and Mosix) available.
The book, however, is clearly intended for administrators of clustering systems; a special emphasis is high-availability and load-balancing clusters. Parallel computing and the types of applications end users would wish to run receive far too little discussion.
Almost all technical books regurgitate the contents of freely available FAQs and HOWTOs to some degree, yet the good ones summarize the relevant points, make dry documentation more accessible, and give the reader some new insights. Because Bookman's Linux Clustering suffers from heinous spelling, grammar, and style errors; deals primarily with outdated software; contributes little new to the discussion; and doesn't speak to non-admins, I can only recommend that those interested in Linux clustering stick to online FAQs and HOWTOs.
You can purchase the Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
153-foot, 200,000-pound Boeing 727 stolen from airport
Boeing 727 jet stolen by an American pilot
What in gods name was he smoking?
Tragek
...the book is divided into eleven chapters, unevenly distributed among three sections...
Last time I checked, 11/3 didn't yield an integer result. Perhaps, if you worked for RIAA or the USB Forum it would be possible to divide eleven chapters into three sections evenly, but it's asking a bit much for professional authors and publishers to be asked to jump through such challenging mathematical hoops.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I recently set up a new account, and have posted 2 comments with it.
The first comment received an -1 overrated moderation, and a +1 funny moderation.
The next day, the karma was bad, and the second comment posted at a score of 0 (with no moderations).
CmdrTaco has stated (in IRC interviews) that karma is designed to filter out bad moderators. However, it seems illogical that funny shouldn't count towards karma, but overrated (and presumably underrated) do.
Worst of all, these changes were implemented without any acknowledgement or notice. If it were another website caught making changes like this, it would be front-page news (maybe two or three times).
I propose a new acronym for all the trolls out there:
FPBC!
(First Post of a Beouwolf Cluster joke)
a Beowulf cluster of Linux Clustering books...
< voiceover=Tom Sellek, mode=enraged> SHOVED UP YOUR ASS?!!!!< /voiceover >
Imaging a beow^H^H^Hookshelf of those!
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Sometimes I still wake up screaming from reading that!
Your mom frequently wakes up screaming when I start to rape her. I punch her until her face swells and then she shuts up. If you would like, I'd be more than happy to rape and punch you. None of this "safe word" crap either, it's either the real thing or nothing at all.
What about Linux Cracklin' Oat Bran?
Please stop trying to pounce so fast on every new article. Give others a chance.
Your mom frequently wakes up screaming when I start to rape her. I punch her until her face swells and then she shuts up. If you would like, I'd be more than happy to rape and punch you. None of this "safe word" crap either, it's either the real thing or nothing at all.
I will meet you anywhere in the world you little shitnose! You talk real tough into a keyboard! Let's see how you do when we're standing nose to nose. Let's settle this in meatspace.
cuz you can't go wrong with mo, mo, MO SQL! The MO the BETTER!
whee, enemies file!