BEOWULF cluster hangs

[Donald Becker]

On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, G.de-With wrote:

> Since a month we have a LINUX BEOWULF cluster, the clusters contains 7 P4
> dual processor 2GHz computers, with 8Gb of RAM per machine. For our network
> we have used Gigabit ethernet.

First data point: 8GB memory.

> When running large computational fluid simulations the simulation starts to
> slow down. At some point the response of the computer is so poor that we

The symptom.  Right away I suspect that you are using a 2.4 kernel
before 2.4.17.

> On our cluster we are running RH7.2 with the LINUX kernel version 2.4.7-10.

No _unmodified_ kernel before 2.4.17 was usable with long-term or
repeated large memory jobs.
Now that the kernel VM problems are largely fixed, I think you will finally
find acknowledgment/consensus about this point.

-- 
Donald Becker				becker at scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993