[Beowulf] SLC3

[John Hearns]

On Thu, 2004-06-17 at 03:50, Eray Ozkural wrote:
> On Wednesday 16 June 2004 18:07, John Hearns wrote:
> > Following on from the debate on a Fedora-based cluster distro,
> > I note on the CERN webpages that there is a collaboration between
> > CERN and Fermilab on SLC3 (Scientific Linux) based on RHEL 3
> >
> > Comments, thoughts on whether or not this would be a good basis
> > for a cluster distro?
> >
> > (I'm just opening a debate, and hope to get some comments)
> 
> Yes, I have another question.
> 
> Which beowulf software solution makes it easiest to install a node from 
> scratch? (Using magic floppy or netboot...) This is our most important 
> criterion for a modest research cluster we will be soon building.

PXE booting.

You can prepare a disk image on the server, and transfer that across to
the slave node. You then pivot-root to transfer control to the slave.
Or you can use a Kickstart install - depends on your philosophy.

If you use a disk image, you make changes/updates to the image on the
master node. Then you either rsync or reboot the nodes for the changes
to take effect.

 If you use Kickstart, make changes to the RPM.
 Use Yum or apt to upgrade the nodes.