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Xgrid Agent for Unix
mac-diddy writes "Someone on Apple's mailing list for Xgrid, Apple's clustering software, just announced an 'Xgrid agent for Linux and other Unix platforms' available for download. There are still some issues being worked on like large file support, but it does allow you to simply add a Unix node to your existing Xgrid cluster. Just goes to show that when companies embrace open standards and code, the world doesn't fall apart."
In the past, as I have moved between jobs, I've written a number of Object->relational mapping tools.
After a while they cease to become fun to write, and you'd rather just get on with writing code that does something instead of infrastructure. By using and contributing to OSS projects, you can use the same code no matter what company you end up at. Because the code is portable it can become part of the package you can offer to a potential employer - they not only get an employee but potentially one that can producive almost right away because they are familiar with the tools they'll be using, with no cost to the company for said tools.
So it makes life easier for you, less re-work. And it makes life easier for employers, as they get richer products sooner. And if the employee becomes really proficient at a widely used OSS project they can write their own way through consulting or training.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, no it is quite feasible if you do it on a large scale and depending on what you use the cluster for. Big Mac and the Army cluster are two examples of where a mac cluster can be cheaper.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
This troll is getting old. MS does not and never did own 40% of Apple. They bought a large chunk of non voting shares in exchange for making IE Apple's default browser. As soon as the 3 year contractual agreement was up, MS sold the shares, and for a decent profit.
Can anybody confirm if the linux and unix ports are smp aware?
(I wrote the xgridagent).
As the other poster said, XGrid does not care what the binary does (so it can be smp aware, multi-threaded, whatever). However, the xgridagent itself is not explicitly smp aware, but it is multi-threaded. Each task is started in its own thread and depending on the OS(?) I guess they could spread to other CPUs. The other aspect of the question is "Does the Unix XGrid agent support MPI like Apple's GridAgent for OS X?". It does not and I can't say for sure how difficult it would be to support it. However, since all communication is done via the XGrid protocol, I don't see what would prevent it from being implemented. BUt other things need to be done first.
The most pressing issue is to fix the annoying "large message" issue which makes the agent hang (while it waits forever for the controller to accept more frames). I am convinced it is trivial, I just don't know enough about BEEP to fix it. I am hoping somebody who knows BEEP will take a look at xgridagent-profile.c and fix the xgridagent_SengMSG() function and send me the patch.
Daniel Côté
If Apple breaks this intentionally (meaning not for adding significant, enhanced functionality) in their next release, I will stand with you as an anti-Apple nay-saying zealot and deride them all up and down /.
-Potentially recovering Mac zealot (it's so hard with WWDC right around the corner :-( )
sigs are for fools and trolls. no signature is *always* appropriate. you should turn them off in your preferences.