[Warewulf] Re: [Beowulf] hpl size problems

[laytonjb at charter.net]

> I keep forgetting that RGB is actually a cluster of text generation 
> 'bots able to crank out more characters per second than most folks can 
> speak ... ;)

Priceless...

> 
> > At most you waste a few seconds and a few
> > hundred megabytes of disk by leaving them in, 
> 
> Latter yes (more like GB), former no.  Trimming the fat from the SuSE 
> cluster install got it from over an hour down to about 8 minutes with 
> everything, per node.  It can go even further if I want to push it, but 
> I think I hit the point of diminishing returns.  I don't mind waiting up 
> to about 10 minutes for a reload, beyond that, I mind.

Another thing to consider is that having all of that extra
stuff on the nodes leads to a huge security tracking
headache. At my former employer, we had to track every
single on every single node. When a security patch was
released by our central IT group, then it had to be updated.
In some cases, the updates were for trivial packages that
we didn't use, but because they were on the cluster node
the work had to be stopped, the cluster brought down,
updated, and the documents updated before the cluster was
put back into production. By not having all of the cruft on
the nodes, our security headache could have been reduced.

Jeff