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Debian Cluster Replaces Supercomputer For Weather Forecasting

Posted by Soulskill on from the when-it-rains-it-pours dept.

wazza brings us a story about the Philippine government's weather service (PAGASA), which has recently used an eight-PC Debian cluster to replace an SGI supercomputer. The system processes data from local sources and the Global Telecommunication System, and it has reduced monthly operational costs by a factor of 20. Quoting: "'We tried several Linux flavours, including Red Hat, Mandrake, Fedora etc,' said Alan Pineda, head of ICT and flood forecasting at PAGASA. 'It doesn't make a dent in our budget; it's very negligible.' Pineda said PAGASA also wanted to implement a system which is very scalable. All of the equipment used for PICWIN's data gathering comes off-the-shelf, including laptops and mobile phones to transmit weather data such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, cloud formation and atmospheric pressure from field stations via SMS into PAGASA's central database."

15 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Re:hmm by Lehk228 · · Score: 4, Funny

    that would be HURD

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    Snowden and Manning are heroes.
  2. Re:hmm by Bigos · · Score: 2, Funny

    it's a cluster, in other words a herd of computers :-)

  3. Obligatory by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 2, Funny
    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of ...

    oh, wait...

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  4. Re:hmm by nacule · · Score: 2, Funny

    More importantly, is it Vista capable?

  5. Where is... by darekana · · Score: 4, Funny

    I tried:
    apt-get -f -y install gweather
    But it failed with something about "ldconfig: /lib/libearthquake-2.3.so.0 is not a symbolic link"

    Is libearthquake in unstable?

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    1. Re:Where is... by palegray.net · · Score: 5, Funny

      You've got it all wrong; you should be using built-in tools like these:

      more weather - For when you need a new update.

      less weather - Got too much weather? Reduce it!

      vi weather - When you want to change the weather.

      emacs weather - When you want to change the weather on 15 separate planets at once.

      cat weather - It's raining... oh, never mind.

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    2. Re:Where is... by gbobeck · · Score: 3, Funny

      Did you enable the "Universe" repository?

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    3. Re:Where is... by Stormwatch · · Score: 2, Funny

      Microsoft Weather - seems to be a very fine weather, but all of a sudden it may turn into a hailstorm.

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    4. Re:Where is... by sincewhen · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hailstorm? or Blue Sky Of Death?

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  6. Re:One thing always missing from such stories... by JK_the_Slacker · · Score: 4, Funny

    6 to 8 years, you say? Well, then, they'll be ready to upgrade about the time the next version of Debian is released.

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  7. Re:Debian? by jonaskoelker · · Score: 4, Funny

    you shouldn't be running anything but compiled source on a performance cluster. you wouldn't be running anything but source compiles on a performance cluster. :p
  8. Re:hmm by JohnBailey · · Score: 4, Funny

    More importantly, is it Vista capable? Yes, but only home basic.
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  9. Re:hmm by FudRucker · · Score: 2, Funny

    since it is a cluster that would be correct, a herd of hurd...

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  10. Re:Debian? by indifferent+children · · Score: 4, Funny

    Give the guy a break. He just wanted to see Gentoo compile in less than 2 weeks; he had a cluster handy...

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  11. Re:Debian? by AvitarX · · Score: 4, Funny

    the code the clusters was actually running was pretty much always compiled by hand.

    You really oughta use a compiler for that.

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