[ale] KSU ALE-NW cluster build-thank you!

[Dow Hurst]

I just wanted to say thanks to those who came out and spent their 
evening working on this project.  For those who couldn't stay, we ended 
up getting 3 nodes to boot off the master node.  We tried the 
ClusterKnoppix distro and after a learning curve on the software and 
simplifying down to four slaves, we had three nodes booting up.  Seems 
the openmosix server startup scripts were having problems with disk 
space, and until we just tried the knoppix terminal server script, we 
were not getting anywhere at all.  We did not get to try the Quantian 
distro.  Viewing the mess of cabling, and dealing with the power 
management was a real experience!

Some of the problems:
The room we expected to have was locked up with no key available.
I thought we could build the whole cluster of 24 nodes which was not a 
good idea.
The 24 port managed switch needed to have a IP reassigned via a serial 
connection.

Some of the good things:
All the slave nodes have the BIOS boot configuration taken care of.
We got to see some of the challenges in building a cluster.
Pizza and lots of Linux talk.
Firewalling provided by Fly-by-Day Consulting courtesy Bob Toxen.

I plan to continue on and start over with adding one slave node at a 
time.  Learning the Openmosix commands on a single slave and then 
growing the cluster one node at a time will help with making sure of 
what is actually happening.  Cable management is a high priority!   I 
had had a tough day at work so I appreciate y'all putting up with the 
disorganization at first.  Thanks to those who brought switches, cables, 
UPSes, and willing know-how!  Sincerely,
Dow

-- 
__________________________________________________________
Dow Hurst                  Office: 770-499-3428            *
Systems Support Specialist    Fax: 770-423-6744            *
1000 Chastain Rd. Bldg. 12                                 *
Chemistry Department SC428  Email:   dhurst at kennesaw.edu   *
Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com *
Kennesaw, GA 30144                                         *
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