MandrakeClustering Shows Off At ISC2003

joestar writes "Just released today at ISC2003, Germany, is "MandrakeClustering", a high-performance computing Linux distribution/solution, which sounds interesting, at least in the PR: Pentium support with optimizations made with the Intel compiler, 64-bit Opteron support (with in this case, up to 16 GB of RAM for each cluster's node!), parallelized URPMI (Mandrake's apt-get) and other dedicated tools. This product is based on a one-year research project "CLIC" involving MandrakeSoft and partners. A good snapshot of the product running a 3D real-time demo is available here. The interesting point now: MandrakeClustering's goal is to provide a system which is easy to deploy, easy to administer and use. Well... Mum would certainly love to play Quake with this toy."

Comments

We make jokes about Quake

[ObviousGuy]

But what are people doing with these things in the wild? Is everyone running rendering farms?

Do file/mail servers really need this kind of horsepower (assuming you aren't Google or Yahoo, of course)?

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[zedmelon]

Actually...

They're running demos of high-resource rendering demos people who buy this setup can run at Comdex 2004.

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[deadsaijinx*]

if i had the money, I'd be running a render farm right now instead of setting my render to low priority just so I can check slashdot. The software looks VERY nice, but unfortunately, unlike the OS, the hardware can't be had for nothing.

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[Anonymous Coward]

if i had the money, I'd be running a render farm right now instead of setting my render to low priority just so I can check slashdot.

If I had the money, I'd be BUYING A PLANE TICKET TO FLY OUT, HUNT YOU DOWN AND KICK YOU IN NUTS!!!

--
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Re:We make jokes about Quake

[Anonymous Coward]

good for you?

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahaha! Fucking funny.

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[Anonymous Coward]

I would imagine that educational institutions might like a quick and dirty rendering farm. Complex projects, like CAD drawings or animations, could be shuffled off to the local render farm, instead of being run all night on one computer. Heaven help you if there is a power outage, hardware failure, or the occasional human interference. I personally think that there is a market that could be created. Just not necessarily for Quake III or Doom III.

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[bm_luethke]

Where I work (www.ornl.gov) we run weather models, nuclear stuff (explosions, fallout tracking, power plants, nuclear medical materials simulations), genome projects, particle flow analisys, a bunch of stuff (though unfortunatly for Mr. Dyslexic here no speel checker for slashdot :) ). Oil companies process seismic data to try and map what's underground, medical companies help develope medicines and gene therapy.

Some of the projects (human genome most currently) may run for weeks over 10-20 terabytes of data. The algorithms used are pretty mundane - you just need to do them A LOT. Some of the particle flow stuff may model individual molecules in a furnace for example (not rendering the frames, but modelling the interactions and how to create a more effecient jet engine).

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[Anonymous Coward]

What's usually done to avoid losing processor cycles is called "checkpointing". That is, saving your state every little while in case the simulation is somehow interrupted.

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[Anonymous Coward]

CFD is one of the major uses of clusters

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[InodoroPereyra]

But what are people doing with these things in the wild?

Huh ? How got this modded as insightful ? Anyways, if you read the announcement, this is for high performance computing. It is a turn-key solution to easily set up, maintain and monitor a parallel cluster. Parallel clusters are essentially arrangements of computers that allow to process data at each computer at the same time ("in parallel"), and then collect the results and combine them, thus making possible to achieve supercomputing power out of inexpensive hardware.

The announcement very clearly states which is the market niche they target (i.e. research labs and the like):

"MandrakeClustering is not only a impressive example of innovative Linux technology, but it's also a complete "all-in-one" solution that includes support & assistance for "real-world" clustering deployments and critical research lab activities. We are extremely confident that this product will answer the needs of numerous technology research centers where time of deployment and ease of administration are highly valued", said FranÃois Bancilhon, MandrakeSoft CEO.

By the way. It is so nice to see Mandrake aiming at corporate/government customers, this is going to be very healthy for the company. I would expect and encourage more of this ...

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[ch-chuck]

Video babee - good quality cg video takes some serious processing. My blender models (after just a month of playing with it) are starting to take hours to render a few seconds (it's those image maps for mirror balls that kills you - it has to render 6 points of view for each frame, running 30 seconds per frame) so yes I NEED A CLUSTER! Also cinelerra has support for extra render nodes built in.

My goal is to produce my own cg nightly news program just like the big boys - reality made up (or biased toward) the way *I* want it (and not as seen in the eye of some lilly livered, limp wristed, mamby pamby spineless network news executive with an obvious political agenda).

An actual quote from an SGI magazine several years ago: "Bringing computer generated realities to the news room".

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been running one since Jan, shortly after they came out with a Phase 1 snapshot (based on Mandrake 9.0). I work in a research lab at a large university. We use NMR (nuclear magnet resonance) to do protein structural work. The structure calculations are very computationally intensive, and that is why we set up the cluster. Its small, 4 dual AMD 2200+ w/ 1G Ram each. It was very easy to setup, and works like a charm (our processing time was cut from ~5 day to an afternoon). Now I just need to figure out Maui.

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[ObviousGuy]

Now I just need to figure out Maui.

I'll trade!

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[laserjet]

Crikey, if you do ALL that where you work, surely you must work for Dr. Evil? I mean, come on - the variety gave it away. Don't worry, we won't tell...

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[floydigus]

Kids stuff.

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[bm_luethke]

Well, I guess that depends on your current political leaning - ORNL is Oak Ridge National Lab (the one from the manhattan project where the fissionable materials were produced) - the US govt.

Let's get it out of the way...

[Aliencow]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these ! I'd kick your ass at quake with one !

Re:Let's get it out of the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

FFS mod this guy down

Re:Let's get it out of the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, Beowulf cluster jokes have been lame for =at least= five years.

Re:Let's get it out of the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone please add "Imagine a Beawulf cluster" to the fucking lameness filter.

Re:Let's get it out of the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

And Beowulf and Be-uh wolf and any other possible misspelling....

One Question...

[INMCM]

Is it as fast as the new Macs?

Re:One Question...

[Aadain2001]

When run at standard settings yes, but if you turn off the compiler optimizations, floating point optimizations, memory optimizations, user optimizations, reality optimizations, and go-fast-now optimizations, the Macs pull ahead by a whole point(when compared to one node)!

openmosix easier

[cdc179]

It's easier to manage an openmosix cluster than this mandrake cluster. Plus you can run diskless nodes using ClusterKnoppix!.

Re:openmosix easier

[KeyserDK]

READ! It clearly states that nodes can boot via PXE.

Re:openmosix easier

[cdc179]

Some organizations management might not allow them to set up PXE. In this case this gives them the convienence of booting workstation nodes into the cluster at night with just a CD. You can read all you want, but you missed the whole point of using the CD for non-Linux nodes.

Re:openmosix easier

[Apostata]

You sound like a religious nut.

You're diverting attention from a Mandrake story with openmosix-plugs, and then you get indignant that the person who brings up a reasonable response "missed the whole point of using the [openmosix] CD".

Neither you nor openmosix is the subject here - the subject is Mandrake. The responder was on-topic.

Re:openmosix easier

[rottcodd]

I've been using Clic for a while on some old diskless PIIIs- too old for PXE- but it wasn't hard to just clone a system and send it out over netboot. If I make major changes to the setup I have to make a new boot image, but that's easy.

It's an old system, but it still gets used (mostly Monte Carlo simulations, a few molecular dynamics, and some other home brewed science type codes).

The nodes (and now even the head!) don't have cd drives, because I'm too lazy to go to re-app and get some...

Re:openmosix easier

[G�tz]

You cannot compare the two, as Openmosix and MandrakeClustering have really different goals. MandrakeClustering is for High Performance Computing. This includes stuff like a batch system for job submission, MPI and a fast interconnect.

Openmosix is for load balancing, it can migrate jobs between the nodes in a cluster, but it's not suited for the parallel number crunshing.

Re:openmosix easier

[Anonymous Coward]

This Mandrake cluster is a Beowulf-type cluster which is very different from a Mosix-type cluster.

In Mosix only kernels talk to each other, so basically the admin just sets them up, boots the nodes and users run programs from the mother node. In Beowulf you need to have all the programs (which you will run on all nodes) installed on every node, usernames to exist on every node, ... This makes adding and removing nodes more complicated, plus that in Beowulf you always need to know the number of nodes in your cluster before starting a program.

HL

Re:openmosix easier

[jdray]

Whaddya mean "too old for PXE?" That's a function of the network card. If, by chance, you're using an oldy-moldy Intel PRO100B adapter (circa 1995 vintage), check the PXE ROM socket to see if there's a chip in it. Newer ones (circa 1998) had the chip soldered onto the card, which turned out to be cheaper when flash prices came down.

This is the problem with Linux

[FatAssBastard]

You have all these (admittedly talented) programmers spending all this
time on worthless projects when they should be spending time on
something worthwhile, like a consistent user interface, easy OS
install, or a decent media player.

Until the Linux Community learns this very important lesson, Linux will
continue to be relegated to second class citizen status to superior OS's
like Windows XP or MacOS X.

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth hurts doesn't it you linux fucks? No response necessary, I can tell by how you modded this down.

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[RLiegh]

Consistent? /bin/sh is /bin/sh wether in NetBSD, OS X or GNU.
I'd consider xmms second only to win amp, dunno what your problem is...

easy OS install? How often do you have to install your os?

clustering research that improves multiplayer gaming well into the next decade? In my mind, that's priceless...

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[qorkfiend]

Unless I read the article wrong, these clusters will not be operating on the same level as Windows and OSX. This is designed for research and heavy-duty number crunching, something that XP and OSX aren't. I agree, talented programmers are spending too much time on worthless projects, but this isn't one of them.

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[Farley Mullet]

I'd consider xmms second only to win amp...

One word:
iTunes.

(I think he was talking about video/streaming media players more than MP3 players, and to be fair, there are a number of codecs that Linux doesn't fully support.)

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[Farley Mullet]

This is designed for research and heavy-duty number crunching, something that XP and OSX aren't.

It looks like I'm the Apple troll today, so I have to point out that there is a specially designed Xserve U1 rackmount for clustering apps. I think that part of this has to do with the fact that Apple is still used disproportionately often in academia, and part of it has to do with the Apple-Pixar connection. But it turns out that OS X (the server edition, anyway) is a clustering OS. See here for more details.

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[pair-a-noyd]

Umm, well, XMMS can't get virused like Winamp can, for one thing..

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[Arandir]

/bin/sh is /bin/sh wether in NetBSD, OS X or GNU.

Not really. /bin/sh is vanilla bourne shell under NetBSD and OSX, but under GNU and Linux it's all too often a symlink to bash. Although bash has very good bourne compatibility, and squeaks past the POSIX shell requirements, it's managed to cause numerous headaches for me when I specify /bin/sh only to get /bin/bash instead. /bin/sh should always be a plain boring bourne shell, and not a link to bash, ksh or another "big" shell. /bin/sh is not going to be used by the enduser, it's going to be used by scripts.

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple hardware is hardly commodity hardware. It's going to cost a lot more $$$ to get a cluster of Apples going vs. a cluster of Intel/AMDs. Even 64-bit Opterons should be cheaper because of its supporting cast of hardware.

But at least with Apple, your cluster will nice and pretty for those photos you'd put on the project website. :-)

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[BiggerIsBetter]

Any word on G5 Xserves?

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

Well with windows i find that a periodic reinstall of the OS (the older the OS the more often) removes weird problems that cropup from use of the system. Ah windows....got love it...NOT!...they make me use it just to punish me :(

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

It looks like I'm the Apple troll today, so I have to point out that there is a specially designed Xserve U1 rackmount for clustering apps. Actually, Ill be the troll, all Xserves are cluster ready. It just takes more than one, and it is cool! Just Frickin expensive, baby!

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[bm_luethke]

Heck, I'm not an Apple fan (in fact I tend to really dislike the UI in the mac os) but yellow dog linux has had some good clustering solutions for smaller clusters, both for high availibility and computation. They had some pretty nifty software (though last time I saw it it had some severe scalability problems with thier UI - but then again they were not selling multi thousand node clusters and it has been a couple of years since I last checked that closely).

See http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[TheNetAvenger]

Unless I read the article wrong, these clusters will not be operating on the same level as Windows and OSX. This is designed for research and heavy-duty number crunching, something that XP and OSX aren't

WindowsXP, um, maybe as the 64bit version also only does 16GB of RAM. :)

However, Windows 2003 Server(check the features for yourself, like the ability to use 512GB of RAM), then I would say no, it isn't in the same class as Windows, not close yet. :)

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[Jonner]

Of course, media formats are completely outside the of Linux's scope, but have you tried MPlayer? It's far from perfect, but it's difficult to find a commonly used format or codec it can't understand.

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[Jonner]

Did your problems result from differences between traditional Bourne shell and POSIX? Bash tries to conform to POSIX more than the traditional sh. Specifically, when invoked as "sh" it enters POSIX mode, so /bin/bash may actually be closer to traditional than /bin/sh. I don't have any experience with traditional Bourne shell, so I really don't know what the issues might be.

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[greg_barton]

Until the Linux Community learns this very important lesson...

You are the Linux community.

Stop bitching and start coding.

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[Arandir]

As I said earlier, bash has very good bourne compatibility. Also the differences between traditional bourne and POSIX sh are minimal.

The problem is that bash running as /bin/sh still recognizes bash extensions. This can make life very difficult in a heterogenous environment. A shell script that says #!/bin/sh should always behave as a bourne shell script, and never as a bash script.

My day job is working on a complex embedded system. My progenitors wrote a whole bunch of bash scripts marked as #!/bin/sh. Everything worked fine as long as bash was linked to /bin/sh. But you're always looking for speed and resources in an embedded environment, so I tried saving about 300k by using a minimal bourne shell (ash). I expected some porting problems, but I would never have guessed that EVERY script had a problem.

Here's one example. HOSTNAME. This is a bash extension. It's a damned useful extension, but an extension nonetheless. And bash still recognizes it in POSIX mode. Something like this is way too easy to overlook when you're trying to write a compatible script. All bash scripts should be marked as bash scripts.

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[Jonner]

Yes, I can certainly see how that would be a problem. Bash needs the equivalent of -Wall and -Werror.

So, is *THIS* where my MD subscription dollars go?

[RLiegh]

If so, then I think it's a pretty good investment. :)

So much for the "bailing out a failing business, let the market sort it out" mindset. If Mandrake hadn't appealed to the public, they would not have had the $ to come up with this. :)

Hahahah. Mandrake F4gs

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows that GENTOO lunix is the r0cks0rZ!!!!1

Opteron wins

[Anonymous Coward]

Supported architectures currently include AMD® Opteron®, Intel® Pentium® and compatible processors (IA-64 support to come later in September).

Gooo AMD!

Which is the best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which Linux distro is the best? Should I get redhat?

Re:Which is the best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... thats entirely a 'personal preference' sort of thing.

Heres some stereotypical information about a few distros, though:

RedHat: Corporate Environment

Mandrake: Easy install, easy to use, but has some hard to resolve dependency issues

SuSE: If you are german

Debian: Do it yourselfer

Gentoo: huge 'coolness' factor, a get-it-while-its-still-hot sort of thing.

Slackware: The traditional disto for hard-core geeks

Re:Which is the best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake is the best, of course.

Re:Which is the best?

[sn00ker]

It's a shame there isn't a "-1: Religious War Initiation" mod.

Re:Which is the best?

[Anonymous Coward]

> RedHat: Corporate Environment

Small correction: large corporate environment. They don't have a small-to-midsize priced offering, only the good-for-one-year consumer product and the Fortune 500-targeted Advanced Server. Nothing in the $200 (say) range.

Re:Which is the best?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why choose only one when you can have them all.

Re:Hahahah. Mandrake F4gs

[Anonymous Coward]

hehehe, I love the internet.

Do you want the real answer or the fake one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until you read it in the NY Times

Re:Do you want the real answer or the fake one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a login account. plzkthx

Re:Do you want the real answer or the fake one?

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdot/slashdot

Only $3000, what a bargain

[mikeophile]

It's not like there's anything free out there that does this.

Obligatory

[Ignorant Aardvark]

"Imagine a Mandrake cluster of ..."

That just doesn't have the same ring to it :-(

Mandrake

[StarTux]

Wow, first /. posting of something Mandrake related in some time. Is it just me, or have a lot of announcements not even mentioned Mandrake recently?

Even though I don't use Mandrake I do wish them the best, especially with a number of Linux distro's competing for the desktop. Hopefully they will make some money from this venture.

StarTux

Re:Mandrake

[incom]

I agree. Althought I currently use Gentoo now that I am more experienced, Mandrake was a pretty enjoyable and painless introduction to linux for me

YES.

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFM noob

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't know, stick to M$ Windoze XP! lamerz

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of... oh nevermind

Looks good but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it still active? Phase 1 was released 7 months ago.

Besides Knoppix's remastered cluster oriented distros any other FREE clustering/HP/not-HA solutions popping out?

Re:Looks good but...

[Anonymous Coward]

it seems Suse packages a bunch of clustering software in their distro (some HA, lam, mpich, math libs ...). never had a cluster to try it on though - and you have to set it up yourself. dunno about others though.

My bad

[mikeophile]

It can be downloaded here

The $2,960 is to get support with it.

Re:My bad

[G�tz]

No, you can't download it. That link is for the predecessor Mandrake CLIC, which isn't the same as MandrakeClustering.
But I'm sure you can get the sources of all the parts developed by Mandrake, as usually all their stuff if GPLed and most of MandrakeClustering is based on the usual Mandrake 9.0.

Mandrake + French =

[Geminus]

An OS that surrenders under pressure?

Re:Mandrake + French =

[Anonymous Coward]

plus a lot of GPL'ed erotic wallpapers ;)

Re:Mandrake + French =

[Anonymous Coward]

No no, it should be "An OS that surrenders as soon as possible."

Re:Mandrake + French =

[BiggerIsBetter]

I know it's trendy to make French jokes (Freedom jokes?) right now, but while the US is still pissing over Iraq (Oil exports have started again. w00t! Still no real infrastructure for the locals, but hey, we've got the OIL) and even Afghanistan, the French are in the DR Congo fighting for the people there.

Props to the French for getting on with the business where it really counts.

And No, I'm not European.

Re:Mandrake + French =

[Anonymous Coward]

And they are over in the Ivory Coast fighting to repress the people there.

As if italics made your point any less stupid. The French are the most two-faced, culturally backwards, hubris-filled people on the planet. Their stream of contribution to world culture has ceased some time ago.

Re:Mandrake + French =

[Atmchicago]

It appears to me the French are the only ones who did not surrender to Bush's pressure to go fight in Iraq, but instead adamantly opposed the whole idea.

Re:Mandrake + French =

[BiggerIsBetter]

The French are the most two-faced, culturally backwards, hubris-filled people on the planet.

Ever been there, AC?

Re:Mandrake + French =

[Anonymous Coward]

And they are doing a bang-up job holding down the forces of self-determination in the Ivory Coast!

Bravo to the French! They've turned their image around from cowering surrender monkeys to heavy-handed imperialists. That's some feat.

Re:Mandrake + French =

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived there for 4 years.

Their culture is a shadow of the past. The only thing that could be called living culture in that country is in their yogurt (and even the Hungarians do that better).

Re:Mandrake + French =

[phoxix]

This has nothing to do with French people. I am plenty sure that there are many people from around the world that have worked on linux, *AND* that you probably disagree with outright.

But none of that matters. What matters is that while our people disagree, and our governments fight, we still can come together on something at least. And in our geeky world, that something is free software.

Sunny Dubey

PS: The right to disagree is rather powerful, sadly people don not see that when they do disagree with each other.

Re:Mandrake + French =

[TheSunborn]

There is so significant oil produktion in iraq right now. Most of the people who (used to)work with oil production are afriad to leave their home.(Still to many uncontrolled people)

Re:Mandrake + French =

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the French were just in preemptive surrender mode. Why go to the expense of sending troops to Iraq to surrender to Saddam when you can just give up right out of the gate?

Re:Mandrake + French =

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, I thought that was an apt description of Americans.

Two-Faced: Force other countries to open up their economies, while putting up trade barriers and subsidising any industry that might be impacted upon negatively.
culturally backwards: Jerry Springer.
hubris-filled: GO USA, WE'RE #1!

Re:Mandrake + French =

[Anonymous Coward]

what's the matter ? lived there for four whole years and couldn't get laid ? You are sad...

Re:Mandrake + French =

[Rinikusu]

The right to disagree: Isn't it a nice right to have? And just think of the billions of people in the world who do not even have it. What we take for granted, there are billions who could only dream to be able to say "I disagree" without fear of getting thrown into prison or shot on the spot.

And, as a mongrel, I can attest that I'm proof positive that men and women of all races, creeds and religions can get together in at least one aspect.

yes

[SHEENmaster]

because we all know that render times kick ass when processors have a 12mb/s wifi link between them. What were multi-processor manufacturers thinking building the processors into one unit when beowulfing is available!

(Beowulf clusters have long-term power but slow reaction times. Firewire networking (maybe scsi?) would help with this, but the node->node bandwidth is still an issue.)

Why would Mandrake use Intel's compiler for the Opteron?

Re:yes

[draziw]

There are better ways to connect systems. eg: Myricom and Quadrics (More money, but faster)

Re:yes

[mandolin]

because we all know that render times kick ass when processors have a 12mb/s wifi link between them.

Even "normal" people can afford gigabit ethernet these days.

Re:yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Mandrake use Intel's compiler for the Opteron?

2 words: SSE2 optimization

it's for number crunching - read fp number crunching, so using the best fp optimizer- at least for 32bit - would make sense (gcc for amd64 is not quite up to speed yet as the hw was not really available)

there's some anecdotic evidence that Opterons perform at their best at fp in 32bit mode when the code is compiled with icc7 optimized for pentium4 :-D

Re:yes

[Anonymous Coward]

We use Myrinet. Low latency(about 10 microseconds IIRC), decent bandwidth(2Gbits/s)

IMAGINE A BE*O*WULF CLUSTER OF ME KICKING UR NUTS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the DISTRIBUTION HOW-TO

[Anonymous Coward]

Which you can find here.

Wow you are a funny guy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just when I thought things had returned back to normal, you come out with this veritable rollercoaster ride of comedic smack-down. Here I was, just cruising Slashdot for thought-provoking discussion when somehow I mined this nugget of laughing gas in solid-form. The part about the Mac? Pure genius. And is it as fast as said Mac? Solid gold. How are you not already dead from laughing so hard? It would be like setting off a chuckle-bomb in your own face each day. I've gotta fax my buddy in the next cubicle with this provided he doesn't knock over our walls with thrashing laugh-spasms. I hope the boss doesn't think we're experiencing some sort of contagious laugh-plague and calls a code hilarious! Let me tell you good sir, we are all blasting reams of laughing gas from every orifice due to this comedic-toxin you have unleashed on all of us. You are quantifiable funnyman! Mods, mod this thread +5 Hilarorrist!

Go for Debian my friend!

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian has a lot less suited marketing lackies that Redhat ;)

Wait for my review...

[SourKAT]

Should be in next week. I'll have my Mom drive it, too. Wait for the slashdot article, "Mom Meets Linux (Super Computer Ed)"

I make jokes about my balls

[News For Turds]

...please put them in your mouth.

Identical systems

[jhines]

The cluster management software may be useful for things like offices, class rooms, etc, where one needs to maintain a bunch of identical systems.

IMHO if you know enough for it to be a problem

[RLiegh]

you know enough to either {rm /bin/sh && ln -s `which ash` /bin/sh} or write conditional statements in your scripts that isn't an option...

good - Mandrake needs some publicity

[molnarcs]

I've been using Mandrake for a while, and I would hate to see this company go - they have many great tools, and they put every single line of code they wrote under the gpl (unlike YAST for instance, even though I love SuSe too). They probably need as much PR as they can get, and this was a good idea.

Its time for some features, like their excellent urpm* tools to get more attention (I wonder why it received such scare coverage, for it is the only package management tool that is on par with apt-get among rpm-based distributions - maybe with the exception of apt-rpm). Another great tool, excellent in large deployments is draksync.

Check out these sites:
urpmi mini-howto and easy-urpmi

So

[mindstrm]

Firewire can do 1Gbps?

Re:So

[putaro]

FW 800 does 800Mbps. No need for hubs either.

Cluster File System

[codepunk]

It ain't a cluster until it has a clustered file system. Until it has that it is nothing more than another high availability solution.

Re:Cluster File System

[Anonymous Coward]

This cluster is the kind for processing power not redundancy you squirrel fucker.

Why the fuck would it need a clustered file system you cockfucker? The shit it's processing will be in fucking god damn ram the whole fucking time anyway you mangina snacking turdbandit.

Take fucking doing processing with big ass clusters 101 or something you ignorant rectumbuccaneer.

Re:Cluster File System

[GigsVT]

I guess you might want to tell that to all the people that do high performance clustering with nothing more than ssh.

Re:Cluster File System

[leviramsey]

Profane Motherfucker? Is that you?

Re:Cluster File System

[jester]

So why does this get a "5 Insightful" exactly ? It is basically incorrect

Re:Cluster File System

[G�tz]

I guess you should read a few papers about what clusters really are. I shouldn't hurt to RTFA either. MandrakeClustering isn't a high availability solution, it's for number crunching. Stuff like Openmosix is for high availability.

There are basically these two kinds of clusters, one for the traditional high performance computing stuff to replace expensive supercomputers, the other one is for high availability, e.g. for preventing the Slashdot effect.

Re:Cluster File System

[Anonymous Coward]

i think /. has too many people with scoring privleges. 'cause everything has a score, and a lot of it's wrong.

Re:Cluster File System

[GigsVT]

Stuff like Openmosix is for high availability.

Sorry, wrong. OpenMosix is HPC.

slubadubslubslubslurpslurpslurpslubslubslrupslurp

[Anonymous Coward]

SALTY!!!

THIS IS THE JOKE POLICE

[Anonymous Coward]

This joke is not funny anymore. Cease and desist making stupid Beowulf cluster jokes.

Have a nice day.

Re:THIS IS THE JOKE POLICE

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, the jokes cease and desist you.

Re:THIS IS THE JOKE POLICE

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a guy who whanted to get in the joke police, the joke police ran away the guy got in a wall.

Re:THIS IS THE JOKE POLICE

[Anonymous Coward]

If that was supposed to be a joke you should be arrested.

clusters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine an openmosix cluster of these?!

All that power and so little style......

[Proudrooster]

Spend $20k on Plasma Displays
Spend $40k on Cluster Hardware
Leave the cords of the subwoofers and amplifier exposed ...
Priceless....

Monster Linux Garage Mantra: If you are going to build something cool, it should look cool too.

Sample AMD Case-mod

IMAGINE

[Anonymous Coward]

a beowulf cluster of my nutz all up in ya mouf, bizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizi zizizizizizizizizizizzzizizizizizizizizizizizizizi zizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizizzzizizizi ziziziziziznatch!

IMAGINE A BEOWULF MONGOLIAN CLUSTERFUCK OF ASSKICK

[Anonymous Coward]

ING SOMEONE WOULD GET FOR POSTING SUCH TRIPE

There. And BTW... I AM SO HAPPY you got MODDED DOWN.

But you have balls for putting your neck out there. Bravo.

WindowMaker on 3 plasma displays.

[motorsabbath]

That's 3 separate instances of windowmaker, right? With Xinerama, wouldn't the icons only be on 1 desktop? Dunno, never used it before.

Re:WindowMaker on 3 plasma displays.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just three instances of windowmaker, it's three separate computers.

oh boy

[digidave]

Clusters, Mandrake, Opteron, 16GB. Add in an Xbox and Natalie Portman and you've got yourself a Slashdotter's wet dream. Well, I guess Natalie accomplishes that on her own, but I'm pretty sure if I had the rest of that stuff it would impress Natalie enough for her to date me. At least I hope so, or I've wasted a LOT of money over the years.

Pot shots at screenshots

[aliens]

Maybe they should've just gotten an ATI 9800 Pro to do the rendering instead of all those loud and expensive boxen ::)

Hey

[rune2]

Let's hope that their webserver is a MandrakeCluster too what with the good ol'-fashioned Slashdotting it's getting now.

Re:Rectumbuccaneer

[Anonymous Coward]

ROTFLMFAO

j00==t3h VL@D|N@T0R

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLLOLLOLL

Re:It's going to cost a lot more $$$

[ShieldW0lf]

It's going to cost a lot more $$$ to get a cluster of Apples going vs. a cluster of Intel/AMDs

Might not be the case if you're a school...

U'R ANUX GOT A SLAHSDOTTING LAST NIGHT

[Anonymous Coward]

U FAGGY SLOPHOLE

fp

[SHEENmaster]

What, aside from decoding some jpegs, is fp used for these days? It's faster to do the calculations as integers and then divide into a floating point value when completed.

Re:fp

[Thing 1]

What, aside from decoding some jpegs, is fp used for these days?

It's yelled out when an article is posted, and generally results in being modded down. Unless it's done in a clever way, like this post.

Re:fp

[LWATCDR]

This has got to be a troll or a joke.
For those that do not know. Juat about any simulation would tend to use fp, Ray tracers like povray, most audio, and video encoders. While intergerizing can be done it is not always good enough. If it was no one would every bother with things like sse2.

Re:fp

[bellings]

What, aside from decoding some jpegs, is fp used for these days? It's faster to do the calculations as integers and then divide into a floating point value when completed.

I was not aware of this fact. Do you have a link?

Integer calculations certainly take much less silicon. But I was not aware that they were faster in modern desktop processors. I would have assumed that for just about all desktop machines the exact opposite was true -- floating point operations would be more heavily optomized, simply because they're more heavily used, and silicon is so cheap. I guess I'm wrong. I learn something new every day.

YHBT.HAND

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for playing!

Sorry. More or less offtopic.

[Anonymous Coward]

But slightly related. :-)

This clustering thing gave me the idea -- pardon me if not original:

Mandrake could sell CPU time! Like those SETI, cancer drug molecule manipulation, code breaking/ prime number finding etc.

We, Mandrake users, could (on a voluntary basis) donate hours of unused computer time to give them what to sell.

Is there a market for this?

Is this possible/viable?

At least, they could use such processing for their distro making related tasks.

Additionally:

They could install automatically (again, on a voluntary basis) bit-torrent servers, so as to reduce their bandwidth bills.

Of course, the usage of such CPU time/peer-2-peer serving would be subject to an agreement. Think here about a list with checkboxes to let the user choose which kinds of content would her machine serve.

This time, I gave my 2 cents.

Thorn is my side......grrrrrrrr

[stox]

/bin/sh should be the Bourne Shell, PERIOD. Ever since the first idiot tried to link /bin/sh to /bin/other-shell, it has caused nothing but trouble. It may not be the greatest, but the Borne shell has been one of the most immutable parts of Unix, for most of its history.

Re:Thorn is my side......grrrrrrrr

[Anonymous Coward]

You might change your mind if you read about the design and implementation of KSH . Particularly look over some of the flaws that /bin/sh has which drove Mr Korn to creat his version.

OMFG THAT IS SICK

[Anonymous Coward]

Do NOT CLICK ON ABOVE LINK

Imagine....

[diablobsb]

Imagine a Mandrake cluster of those....
I mean... the opterons ;)

mandrake... uhhh... cluster

[Thelonious Monk]

I don't know about anyone else out there, but I wouldn't exactly feel comfortable running a Mandrake cluster... Mandrake has some serious bloat... and well, its mandrake ;)

openMosix has a distributed file system

[Anonymous Coward]

or a filesystem that can be used that way.

I wonÂt tell you, visit www.openmosix.org.

It is not where your MD subscription dollars go...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to disappoint you, but the CLIC clustering project money come from :
1) The French government innovative fund
2) The French research centers (INRIA)

No need to explain that french people pay directly for both of those.

A french cluster guy

right ...

[buchanmilne]

Some organizations management might not allow them to set up PXE.

So you think someone is going to setup a high performance cluster on the same network segment as the rest of the corporate network?

Spend a fortune on high performance compute nodes, and not buy a seperate switch?

The 3D Demo

[Hufo]

I am the main programmer of the 3d demo shown on the screenshots. This demo combines a distributed interactive fluid simulation with graphical intensive rendering using pixel shaders. It uses Net Juggler to manage the distribution on the cluster. You canse some picture and a video of the fluid simulation in our gallery . The shader for the rabbit's fur is explained on this page of my website (please be gentle with the server...).

Enough about Quake

[SleezyG]

Here it comes... I'm going to vent. How is that ./ readers (clearly amongst the most well-educated of the 'net surfing masses) always fall for the bigger == better claim? First of all, Quake, or any computer game that I can think of, does not have multi-node support. You have to rewrite the code to support the PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) message passing library, for example.

And it's not just with clusters we seem to have this problem. Let's look at Apple computers and the G5. A 64-bit machine will simply allow you to add/subtract/multiply/etc really big integers faster. How often do think you use numbers that large? Encrypting or decrypting emails is the only thing that comes to mind for even an "above average" user. Unless you run software that supports multiple processors such as web and database servers or want to watch a DVD while you play Quake, a multiprocessor machine is not for you. The relative performance increases are negligible. It's simply a marketing ploy that allows Apple to make a high profit on the low volume of units they ship. They throw an additional $300 uP in their computers and charge an extra $1000!

But in Apple's defense, their displays rock. Any luck getting one of those running on a PC? I'm done ranting. Have a nice day.

hey

[pulse2600]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of MandrakeClusters!

Optimized?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's this? Compiler optimizations to make things run faster? Last time I checked Slashdot folks thought this was the dumbest idea ever. Yeah go hug your Mandrake CDs you wimps.

YHBT

[Anonymous Coward]

HAND

Re:YHBT

[greg_barton]

FYAH

d00d, that fscking rules

[Anonymous Coward]

you are my hero...

Why are you so stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you really think that amazon.co.uk would have a big discussion about the KSH shell?

moron....

We have a winner!

[Anonymous Coward]

Johnny, please tell this mental giant just what he's won!

Re:We have a winner!

[greg_barton]

My, you is a persistent AC, ain't ye?

Penguins

[rossy]

Now we know what type of performance we can get when we get all of these penguins to swim in the same direction all day.