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Boot a CD and Make Your X-Box Join the Cluster
jaromil writes "Last week at the Linux Expo UK in London the dyne:bolic distribution was shown to boot on a XBOX console automatically joining a cluster of other PCs on the fly, there is also an article on ZDNet UK covering the story." The article also discusses some of the issues with getting unsigned code to run on the X-Box.
Sir, your grammar is atrocious. 'Shown', surely.
have I seen a picture that so begged for a fark photoshop competition.
then go bye one... everyone knows microsoft loses money on everyone they sell but isn't used for games. for the communitiy !!!!
Why is this listed under the interviews category?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
it surely is a good clustor node candidate. makes less noice, not to much heat, does not take much space, and for its price quite fast. i am just wondering about the network card speed, how is that performing?
They haven't come out with any good games for the xbox lately, here's something useful to do with it. I wouldn't mind a cluster of xboxes :) If only microsoft would cooperate a little more with it, we'll get around their digital signatures, its only a matter of time.
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
http://www.linuxexpouk.co.uk/ does.
Comment: Yes I realise the username 'fuckfuck101' makes me sound intelligent, no you cannot buy it from me.
That picture just re-affirms the fact... if geeks can't get laid, how will the reproduce? Are geeks dying off? What's going to happen?
Now, unless I'm mistaken, this has been possible for quite some time now. The only new part is that they're using it for a cluster, and commercial companies are considering doing the same. Of course, the article points out that this too has already been done with Sony PS2s.
The only 'news' here is that they're using an X-Box for the cluster.
In short, move along. Nothing to see here.
Cooper
--
Television is reality, and reality is less than television -- Videodrome
These things might be looking a bit slow now, but where else can you get a 100 node cluster with 6.4GB of ram and 1TB of disk for just £10k? That's practically in the home computing market.
/. front page!
Not only that but once you get it up and running you will get a certain mention on the
Beep beep.
Hi Mr. Box, I was wondering how you felt about being linked to others just like yourself in an attempt to create a distributed network? I also wanted to know what plans you had for the future?
As a builder of clusters, I can tell you that we are always looking for more bang for the buck. The xbox is cpu is at least 5 times slower than a Pentium 4 3 GHz cpu. Thus, it needs to be at least five times cheaper (including extra network and power comsumption overhead). A shuttle box with 1 GB Ram and GHz cpu goes for about $750. So at best, the xbox is barely breaking even at $150 per node. When you add chipping costs, network switches, power consumption, floor space and parallel efficiency, the xbox loses.
The playstation efforts, are to program the vector units, not just use the general cpu. Even with that it is not worth it now, but it is hoped that the experience gained with ps2 might translate to a quicker porting to ps3.
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
In other news, Microsoft has released an internal memo to the Xbox division, reminding users about the possibility of social engineering attempts.
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
I am working with Jaromil on the dyne:bolic CD. The latest bootable CD also contains the LiVES video editing system. With this CD it will be possible to grab frames from a camera, edit and splice the clips, VJ with them, then encode them to any format and burn them on to CD ROM.
VT cluster, $5.2M.
1100*2*2Gig=4.4 million PMU (Pointless measuring units)
1100*4G=4.4TB ram
1100*160G=176TB disk
Xbox cluster, $5.2M
52000*733=38.1 million PMU
52000*64M=3.3TB ram
52000*10G=520TB disk
Looks like the XBox wins to me, assuming you would figure out a way of jamming an infiniband network card in there, but then Google manages just fine with 100mbit*.
Of course you would get a big scream out of Redmond either way - buying Apple or buying the XBox, and it might be a tad difficult to get them to take you seriously when you ring up to order 52,000 XBoxes...
*100mbit to the rack switches.
Beep beep.
"There are people trying to get a buggy CD signed by Microsoft using social engineering techniques," added Jaromil.
Okay, who did they get to sleep with Bill?
On the one hand you hear people rightly bashing Microsoft, but on the other people credulously believe that M$ loses money on every XBox therefore we should all buy some. Yeah, right, and you want to lick Steve Ballmer's shoes with that ?
I didn't realize Mario and Luigi were coming to the XBOX ... and who's the guy on the right?
I live in Australia, and ya know, COPYRIGHT CIRCUMVENTION IS ILLEGAL HERE THANKS TO SONY. Even though the ACCC is trying to lawsuit about it.
this has been on the feature list for some time now. not really a big thing if you're current with openMosix development. hopefully i can port PlumpOS to X-box if it isn't very complicated, or try to support it in the next release of PlumpOS.
bill gates (2 500 000 results) versus linus torvalds ( 708 000 results)
In Soviet AI research, XBOX cluster imagines YOU!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Hey, it's just an idea. :)
You owe me a new set of retinas.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
It's Xbox. Not X-Box.
(you insensitive clod)
Schnapple
Now it's L-box (although Tux-Box works better, I think).
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
though I do agree that the only thing new is that we have a horrible picture to make fun of and a new story to run beowulf cluster jokes on.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
I wonder how do you consider various PPC hardware then? In terms of price per performance specifically in a cluster environment?
Less is more !
There is a torrent for the dyne:bolic distribution.
Don't know about Ogg.
They lose MORE if they don't sell them at all. They lose $150 LESS (or whatever they cost nowadays) if you buy one.
Unfortunatly this has nothing to do with the xbox as most of the people in question are actually M$ Software designers working on future versions of Windows , IE and Outlook
Beowulf cluster of these..oh, wait, yeah!
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
First: It was not shown to boot on an XBOX console. It was shown to boot on a hacked Xbox (Note correct capitalization) console. This is important information and should have been included in the story submission.
Second: The ZDNet UK article claims that clustering Linux on Xbox requires using OpenMosix. This is untrue. You could use Mosix! Or, you could use one of the other clustering packages available. Beowulf clusters come to mind... At least the ZDNet article points out that it's a hacked Xbox, however.
While knowing it is hacked would seem to be simply an assumption for any /. reader, who is assumed to know that Xboxes are hackable, and must be hacked to use them for this purpose, there is the possibility for a buffer overflow bug in the DVD-ROM accessing code, and so we need to know how the boot was carried out. Indeed, on a site known for its technical discussions, this piece of technical information not being included is so grievous an error as to be ridiculous.
You could sum this whole comment up, unfortunately, as "thanks, taco!"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is IMO wrong, because they will have to produce less consoles then.
They will make a loss for every person which buys a console, but less than x games. Also the loss is certainly not the price which the console is for sale (and if it is, it is by coincidence).
I read the article because I hoped some clever people had found a way to hack the xbox with a custom cd.
What is the news in connecting a machine which is essentially a low spec pc (the xbox) to a cluster?
Sure, it costs them some when you buy it, although that amount is dropping the more that are sold.
What Microsoft gains out of it though is the ability to walk into a game shop, and tell them to build exclusivly for the xbox, because they know that there are exactly $Xboxes out there that can run their game.
In the console market, that is a powerful thing. You can't get an exclusive game, without a good promise on returns, and you dont' get that without a large market segment.
c'mon here at Napoli (Neaples, Italy) they sell already hacked xboxes...
It's always fun seeing new (to me anyway) software for the first time.
interface and several apps
muse
freej
Shouldn't a cluster of Xboxes be referred to as a "collective?"
So Linux is helping Microsoft x-boxes join the cluster? His Divine Shadow will be pleased.
2. What exactly is to be learned from this? Wouldnt they be better off working with something else, like building a unix or linux cluster? I really dont know, Im just wondering on his one.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Are you forgetting about the very-powerful NVidia GPU in the XBox?
If you've got a task that uses math that the GPU is good at, there is little these days that can touch it in cost/performance for a cluster.
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
dyne:bolic has a bootloader signed by the xbox-linux project, which means you can use bugs as the one in mechassault game to boot linux on a UNCHIPPED xbox.
regarding the cluster issue you raise: we only tried to make it work with a pure OpenMosix cluster, I can't assure it works with any other cluster.
anyway the ZDNet article mentions the chipping need and reports my declaration about napolitans thru the world, if that's enough for you.
i love zealots
That's cool and all - it's the proper way to do things given current limitations - but unchipped is irrelevant because you still need to either use a memory card with a PC interface (such as mega-x-key) or the swap trick to get the files on there. Some sort of hardware hacking tool continues to be required, and this is worth mentioning in the story submission, don't you think? While dyne:bolic is probably quite groovy, it's still far less of an achievement (and thus far less interesting) if you still have to hack your way in somehow, in a non-automated fashion. This is not to say it's no achievement.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"