Slashdot Mirror
Building a Linux XBOX Cluster
Hack Jandy writes "Getting Linux to work on an XBOX became relatively easy a few years ago, and building an XBOX render farm became the next logical solution. Anandtech bought 8 XBOXes and clustered them into a neat project any hardware hacker could appreciate. Check out the results as Anand pits his 8-way cluster against some Xeon and Opteron workstations as well."
that's right, biatches.
A beowulf cluster of 8-way XBox clusters!
"What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos"
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of . . . errr, wait a second.
gorilla wearing a tutu.
What did you think I was going to say?
a beowulf cluster of Lunix Xboxen?
make it an LXXX-Box?
Here.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Forget it.
Finally a real hardware story! How many YRO stories did we have to slog through to get to this kind of meaty story?
Clustering XBoxes? What kind of maniac would even consider that kind of thing? My kind of maniac, I guess!
Click here to enlarge
I didn't even have to click it. I'm already there, man!
Somewhere out there in the world there are 8 little boys who are crying because they can't play Halo 2.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
it has a dark side, a light side, and it holds the universe together Oh and XBOX Beowulf clusters :)
to play Halo 2 on as many TV's as I can at one time!!!
Here is the coral cache of it. You never know!
A beowulf clu....
aww crap.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
imagine a beowulf cluster of buds!
How do you write in Linux on XBox? With the gamepad, or am I missing something?
I bey they won't get very much advertising money from Microsoft after this nice little stunt.
Hard to believe a super fast $3400 SMP Opteron workstation has the performance of 6 xboxes combined!
If I only was rich and not a poor college student. Gentoo and the BSD ports would fly on such a beast.
It shows that performance has gone along way since 2001 when the xbox was released.
http://saveie6.com/
Okay, but how about my GameCube cluster? Or maybe a mixed system?
- Page 8
Amazing restraint by the good folks at Amandtech not to pander to the Slashdot crowd with an easy, "Imagine a...."A Beowulf Cluster
So far, we have played around a little bit with the idea of a stand-alone XBOX doing some neat things. But what if we want to actually make a high availability processing cluster across all of our Linux machines at once? This is the murkier world of XBOX PCs, distributed computing. There are a lot of really good documents detailing how to set up a secure, robust and stable Beowulf Cluster, but this isn't one of them. We only want to benchmark 8 XBOXes in parallel operation.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Now we have a Beowulf Cluster of bad XBox Beowulf Cluster posts.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I remember something about selling mod chips being illegal, however I didn't follow the story very closely...
A low cost linux xbox for a server would be cool though, does anybody know if I could legally buy a mod chip to run linux?
You mean, a few years ago when they started selling XBoxes...?
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
I doubt they even tested the scripts as pasted:
... do
...; do
#!/bin/bash
for i 192.168.1.11 192.168.1.12 192.168.1.13
ssh root@i argv
end
should be
#!/bin/bash
for i in 192.168.1.11 192.168.1.12 192.168.1.13
ssh root@$i argv
end
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
http://arrakis.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ps2/cluster.php
i think this was on slashdot a few years ago.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
If you think about it, its a way to build a very large scaled out cluster using dirt cheap commody hardware. Where could something liek this be used? try your local high school or vocational school. Wanna build a cluster to give hands on experiance to the students? 20 cluster nodes for under 3 grand
Introduction
A few weeks ago, we started investigating the possibility of putting Linux on an XBOX. We played with some ideas in our heads, a render farm, a cheap office computer or a distributed crypto platform, just to start. The idea required a little bit of elbow grease, a mod chip, Linux and a bunch of free time.
Costs
Unfortunately, the cost of building an XBOX PC runs a little more than the cost of the XBOX. We need to factor in the cost of the mod chip, probably a hard drive, keyboard and mouse. Mod chips run anywhere from $40 to $80; the one we use in this review costs about $75. A USB keyboard and mouse usually run another $15. If you are going to be doing any clustering, you do not really need to invest in a keyboard/mouse at all. For most uses, the 8GB hard drive is sufficient enough, although upgrading to a 20GB drive might be in order for a larger Linux distribution.
Used and refurbished XBOXes range from $120 to $160. Used XBOXes are usually the way to go, since we will be soon voiding the warranty anyway to install the mod chip. When shopping for an XBOX to mod, older is sometimes better. Although the SmartXX mod chip works on all versions of the XBOX available, the newest version 1.6 XBOXes require a few extra wires to be soldered, even on the solderless install kit.
For our distributed computing ideas, we have an exciting analysis in store. We managed to round up 8 XBOXes with mod chips for this review. That only equates to 5.8GHz of distributed CPU power, 80GB of hard drive space, and just 512MB of memory. However, if our distributed computing project is successful, scaling to a much higher CPU clock might be very feasible. Finding an equivalent $1600 PC would be nearly impossible, but that assumes our distributed XBOX network actually behaves like a $1600 PC instead of 8 $150 PCs. It may be the case that network and disk latencies are too high for us to practically compute anything. There are also some issues on power consumption and noise. The XBOX is relatively quiet for a PC, unless you have a whole lot of them. Our lab recorded approximately 42dBA when our eight node XBOX cluster was on.
If you plan on just running your XBOX as a stand-alone PC, then costs like power become no issue. The XBOX consumes 100W at full load. For a 16-cluster node to operate for one hour, we need 1.6 kilowatt hours of power. If you pay 10 cents per kwh, that's about $1400 for one year of operation.
Putting it all Together
Modding the XBOX is really the simple part. We received a solderless SmartXX v2 from www.bmmods.com. These generally run for $75 if you get the solderless adaptor or $60 for the solder option. Other mod chips work well for installing a Linux distribution, but the SmartXX comes with an XBOX version of Debian (Xebian) and is the most mature chip for running a Linux distribution.
Opening up the XBOX and getting at the mainboard was fairly simple. The SmartXX comes with PDF manuals that demonstrate how to unscrew all of the components. Below, you can see the process in a few quick steps. Opening the XBOX just requires an Allen wrench.
Opening the XBOX
The next step is to remove the hard drive and DVD drive so that we can get at the D0 pin hole on the motherboard. This will allow us to put the XBOX into debug mode.
Removing the drives
Now, we have the SmartXX finally mounted correctly. If you look carefully at the image below, you can see the copper wire from the pin pad to the D0 lead that gives our mod chip all the magical power.
Total time for our installation was about 15 minutes, although a solder option would probably take a little but more than a half hour. Adding the mod chip to the XBOX was far simpler than any of us had originally thought, and after doing the process just once with a solderless option, we feel like we could easily do the process again with a solder option. This would save us a bit of cash if we were consideri
It's obvious where all you clever folks are going to go with this, so please keep your tired old jokes above this post so that the rest of us may discuss in peace, please....pretty please.
I'd just like to point out that the point of a cluster is not to link together a bunch of cheap machines to save money; the time and energy required to write paralleled programs far exceed the cost of hardware. Rather, the point is to gather the highest end commodity machines you can afford and attain mainframe-level performance.
the spoiler? its not worth the time or effort - the XBox has too little memory to be effective at really anything...
= Grow a brain...
And slashdot has reported it exactly 200 times.
Guess what? XBoxes make shitty cluster nodes. Whaddasurprise.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
wasnt this done last year??
here?
but it is old news, from 10/10/2003:
On the stand of a multimedia-oriented Linux distribution called dyne:bolic, operating system author and maintainer Jaromil -- the moniker he prefers to be known by -- was demonstrating a hacked Xbox that can be used to offload processing tasks from a mixed cluster of PCs and Xboxes.
Price:
PC < Xbox + modChip
CPU:
Xbox < PC
RAM:
Xbox < PC
Cool:
PC < Xbox - (that's arguable considering you are adding to the Xbox sales figures.)
WTF? This one I just dont get (beyond why not)
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
I've always wanted a computer that takes up the whole room.
This is Kristopher Kubicki's article... who is in UIC's ACM club, the meetings of which I should get around to attending.
is because they ran out of Gamecubes for my Linux cluster.
So, now that the Star Wars Special edition has 'updated' my pre-live xbox and patched it, will I still be able to mod it? (I'm assuming my options have been reduced to a modchip rather than a non-destructive hack) I left my original xbox (patched) alone and bought the second one to futz with...Damn you Lucas and Gates!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
There are very stable software-only hacks to get a hacked BIOS installed. The best one is called UDE. I uses a buffer overflow in the font handling calls of the Xbox dashboard (actually a replacement dashboard). Then it installs its own BIOS and runs its own software.
Here is the skinny. I use this to launch XBMC and turn the xbox (w/ remote) into a very nice media center for every tv in my house. Plus, it plays games.
Note that these tests only uses the computing power of the main processor, while the GPU is sitting idly by doing nothing. With a little effort, and perhaps the use of some tools that harness the computing power of the gpu, these clusters would get a lot faster. It may not help in tasks like the distributed kernel compile, but things like parallel raytracing which can use the massively parallel floating point capabilities of the xbox graphics card could really benefit here.
In the future, the playstation 3 will really provide an opportunity for some enterprising cluster builders for couple of reasons. First, the initial release of most console hardware is where the manufacturer sells them for the biggest loss. Sony actually makes money on PS2s now even if you don't buy any games, but when they release the PS3, they'll be selling at a loss and your performance-to-cost ratio is going to be huge. Secondly, if the architecture decisions behind the PS3 make it anything like the PS2, it will be much easier to harness the vector engines for general purpose calculations (compared to other graphics cards). Most of the horsepower in the PS2 (and potentially in the PS3) is in it's parallel vector engines. While the general purpose processor is reasonably fast (300 mhz mips), the vector units can dispatch a ton of parallel floating point operations which enable it to run games that would crush a 300 mhz pentium with a comparable circa-2000 graphics card.
My Xbox renders frames along with an Athlon 2600+. and an Athlon 750. I'm planning to add more to my
/audio streaming 'set top box'.
network once they drop in price even further.
The XBox will happily support USB wireless LAN etc, and running Freevo makes a fairly slick video
It rips DVDs at 10-15 frames per second so I keep it busy crunching away on my DVD collection when it's not being used for other things.
It will also play XBox games, but I don't own any of those.
Its really quite a useful little machine to have around, although the lack of 3D drivers really limits it's true potential.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Doom 3 jokes? Alright, I'll take a stab:
Finally, now I can play Doom 3 on my XBOX!
I really dont see the logic on spending "from $40 to $80" on a modchip when the xbox allready has a perfectly fine flash chip.
The normal flash chip can be used, as explained at http://www.xbox-linux.org/Getting_Started#16
It's an easy process, cheaper and I think neater than a modchip. This is, of course if you want the xbox to be a purely linux machine. Modchips are fine if you still want to use it for xbox games, but if its only running as a 'free' machine, modchips are a waste of time and money
I'll just have you know, I'm voting for Clinton out of spite in 2008. These are dark, dark days...
Aie.
The last thing we need is a beowulf cluster of beowulf cluster jokes.
Although..... man.... just imagine.
Just remember, "Hate Bush," as I call the spite-vote in my journal, didn't elect Kerry nor defeat Bush. You'll need to have a positive message by 2008 to win. In fact, some of the "Hate Bush" backfired -- like the Guardian's attempt to sway that county in Ohio to vote Kerry -- that county was the only one Gore won in 2000 that switched to Bush in 2004.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
In the Beowolf part of the story they mention a "Hard Drive Blaster". Never heard of such a thing - anyone have an idea what this is and how much it costs?
Greg
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
Everything these guys did can be acomplished with current software hacks. My xbox is hacked, new hard drive, runs backup dvds, I mainly use it as a media center (stream all divx/mp3/whatever cause its based on mplayer), and I did it all for free. (though I already owned Mechasault and an action replay) Even putting a new hd in is much easier than the way they did it. You no longer have to hotswap to unlock and relock an xbox hd. Best $150 dollar device Ive ever bought.
Q: What did Elmer Fudd do to his girlfriend?
Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.
Does anyone have a clue as to how hot a room would get operating eight or, sheeze, sixteen theoretical XBoxes?
I would imagine that equatable desktop PCs in a cluster probably have the XBox cluster beat in terms of CPU power delivered per degree, though I could be very wrong. Anyone got any idea?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Don't know why he would buy 8 $75 modchips. A $10 or less copy of Mechwarrior or 007 and he could have soft modded them and installed Linux that way.
has anybody done a "reverse" hack that would permit X-Box games (like Halo-2) to run on a higher performance PC (Not X-BOX)? Also, anybody hacked in a higher performance CPU to an X-BOX?
How was this modded as "Insightful"????? -1, Redundant
From the so caled 'article'...
:)
One of the better features of the XBOX is its small footprint in a "stackable" design.
The machines do not stack entirely well as the top of each XBOX is slightly curved.
...which is it? So not stacking entirely well is a better feature? I'm confused
you bastard, you're below the line
For 3 grand you can buy also some faster off the shelfs pc's that are 3 times(~2400 Mhz equivalient) faster that the x-boxes, have 1 Gigabit network interfaces. and you can choose if you use a HD or not. Use onboard graphics. and have more memory if you application requires it. I bet some people here can google up some of this projects in seconds.
remember the $200 PC?
(i know some of these projects, but they are in dutch. )
The comparison to a high-end opteron/xeon is just not fair from the price perspective, however it is an interresting experiment. (And it leaves you with 8 modded xbox to play halo the next week in the anand labratory)
There's only 3 reasons you'd buy a modchip for an Xbox (pick one).
1. You have an Xbox version 1.6 or higher.
2. You want to turn it off to play on Live.
3. You like wasting money.
ALL Xboxes prior to the 1.6 have a reflashable BIOS chip (referred to incorrectly by Xbox modders as a "TSOP" due to the packaging of the IC itself). There's several ways to do exploits to run Linux to run the Raincoat reflashing software, the easiest of which is a gamesave exploit. You can build a memory card reader/writer (to transfer the gamesave) in about 5 minutes by splicing together an Xbox joystick extension cable and a USB cable. You can find an exploitable game at a used game shop, at Blockbuster or on eBay. Solder two points together on the motherboard to enable the write lines and you're good to go. I've lost count of how many Xboxes I've modded this way. Works perfect every time.
All this info is on Xbox-Scene, it truly surprises me AnandTech made a $75 X 8 mistake.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
You can't do any decent rendering when you're stuck with 64Mb of RAM. I work at a visual effects company and all the machines in our farm have at least 2Gb in them.
I can just imagine these guys reading a /. thread on xbox linux, and somenoe says:
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these
And they think, hmm, not a bad idea!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Gorilla wearing a tutu. Yea, that's exactly how I'd describe putting Linux on a cluster of eight X-Boxes. Giving microsoft eight times more support per person than they want, and thinking you're doing some great free software thing? Sheesh.
People. Boycott Microsoft. They're convicted, unrepentant criminals who damage our society and our industry, and they don't deserve your support. 'nuff said.
it should be
#!/usr/local/bin/rc
for(ip in 192.168.1.11 192.168.1.12 192.168.1.13) {
ssh root@$ip $*
}
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Cxbx is not an emulator, it is an API translation layer. It is not much different than wine with openglide or another glide wrapper.
single xbox dedicated to playing games and leaving your real computer to doing computer things.
-Dipster
Ok, so back in the day an Xbox was cheap for what it was but these days? Buying PIII 733MHz, 128MB, 10 gig HDD's in bulk you can get them for £35-£40 (~65 dollars) making them, at most, half the price of an X box. No mod chipping required, bigger hard drive and a real P3 chip instead of the bastardised half celeron found in the X box.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
Precisely what the parent of my original post was looking for.
To me, Cxbx or WINE are "API emulators".
Moll.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
We're talking "clustering", not "distributed" computing: i'd like to see these experiments with an OS that was designed to be distributed from the ground up, e.g. Amoeba (http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/).
How, exactly, is it that people can site approximately accurate statistics about antiquated non-PC/Mac hardware, yet still get mixed up about the timeline of relatively recent PC-class hardware?
The 300MHz Pentium II came out in 1997. Near as I can find, the newest 3D accelerator was the Voodoo Rush.
By contrast, my machines at home, both 750MHz Durons, came out in 2000, and came with Riva TNT2s.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
With a single modchip, you can overwrite the xbox's TSOP with the linux bios.. then you can unplug the modchip, and use it to flash an unlimited number of xboxes, so it is cheaper than what anand calculated..
If your stupercomputer goes down, you just get in on the X-box class action lawsuit...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
Ok, the solar powered flashlight and the helicopter ejection seat have been knocked down a place in the list of useless inventions. ;)
Well, when you got the X-Box for free (friend went overseas and gave it to me), yeah it's cost beneficial.
Plus, this is just a hobby for me, and while I agree with you that the X-Box is no speed demon for rendering, and is memory limited, the point is it is a versatile little machine, which can be easily clustered and is capable fo doing 'real work'
Of course you can get more 'bang for buck', but if you are capped w/regard to absolute expenditure - e.g. if you only have $500, then the XBox stacks up pretty well in my view.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long