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Open Source Distributed Shell Tools?

Posted by Cliff on from the for-those-of-you-with-many-boxen dept.

ColonelForbin74 asks: "While some may assume that most larger server clusters run advanced / custom software(i.e. Beowulf, cfengine, OSCAR), many of those stuck in the not-research-this-site-runs-production world know this simply isn't the case. Many people like myself are working with medium-to-large scale clusters with little help other than shell for() loops and some SSH trusted keys. What application-level tools are out there that might help SysAdmin / AppSupport types like myself run commands across a given cluster, push files out, etc? In my desperation to have some sort of tool in my toolbox, I've actually created one. However, I have a hard time believing this is the best thing out there, and would appreciate all the ideas and links I can get!"

12 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Try this for a start by epsalon · · Score: 4, Informative

    A lecture from the Haifa Linux Club about the subject.

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    Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org

  2. The bitcluster tools are useful by Kraken137 · · Score: 5, Informative


    http://www.bitmover.com/bitcluster/

  3. Whatever happened to... by Bandito · · Score: 4, Informative

    DSH? I used it awhile back and was pretty happy with it.

    It was a bit unstable, but that was almost a year ago. Give it a try.

  4. How about pdsh? by cinnerz · · Score: 4, Informative

    PDSH works pretty well in my experience. It's pretty good to run commands on the nodes and pdcp can copy files out.

  5. herdtools by MacJedi · · Score: 3, Informative
    herdtools

    /joeyo

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    2^5
  6. Distribulator by The+Clockwork+Troll · · Score: 0, Informative
    We are big fans of Dace's Distribulator.

    We find it to be an improvement over simple shell tools for typical cluster administration tasks.

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    There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
  7. Rocks Cluster Distribution by tellurian · · Score: 3, Informative

    I like the Rocks Cluster Distribution. It is above all simple to use, well documented, and stable.

    1. Re:Rocks Cluster Distribution by tellurian · · Score: 2, Informative
      I guess I forgot to mention its distributed shell tool :-)

      It's called "cluster-fork".

      For example:

      • # cluster-fork rpm -Uvh foo.rpm
  8. radmind by More+Trouble · · Score: 2, Informative

    You might try radmind. It's used pretty popularly in the Mac OS X world, but was originally written for Solaris, Linux, and *BSD. There's a reasonably sized community using it, and a supportive mailing list.

    :w

  9. SUN's grid engine by martin · · Score: 3, Informative

    is free for both solaris (Sparc & x86) and Linux..

    http://wwws.sun.com/software/gridware/sge_get.ht ml

    grid engines 'tend' to be more useful as they can balance the load better to non-dedicated hosts. Just my view, but saves building a dedicated cluster with all these 2ghz pentiums on the desktop..(assuming you have linux on the desktop of course)

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  10. Not quite what you want, but... by abulafia · · Score: 2, Informative

    CFengine rocks. It isn't a distributed shell, but for configuration management and remote automated changes, you can't beat it.

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    I forget what 8 was for.
  11. ghosts by jmason · · Score: 2, Informative

    'ghosts' is a command which has been included with perl in the 'eg' directory since at least 4.036. It does this effectively, allowing you to do

    gsh somemachines somecommand

    or

    gcp somefile somemachines:/etc/newfile

    worked great, last time I had to admin a large network (about 5 years ago ;). *EXTREMELY* simple, too.

    http://outflux.net/unix/software/gsh/ seems to be an updating of this tool.