[Beowulf] Linux cluster for my college

[Geoff Jacobs]

Sandip Dev wrote:
>    We are planning to set up a linux cluster on trail basis in our
> college.Since its merely a trail,we have been alloted PIII PCs with 128
> MB Ram and 40 GB HD on a 100 MBps LAN.All i want to know is,will this
> hardware support a cluster? Moreover which distro/software to begin
> with?  If this trial succeeds we will get whatever hardware we want.But
> I just want this trial to succeed.Please help me.

For this size of cluster, the distro you use doesn't matter
particularly. I would assume the important part of the trial is a test
subset of your target application, no? Choose your distro based on
compatibility with the application(s), your familiarity level, compiler
requirements, etc. Configure NFS, password-less ssh, install MPICH,
replicate the password files, and (fingers crossed) Bob's your uncle.

You probably don't want to be using a source-based distro like Gentoo,
though.

Once you have the basics licked, you can move on to something like
Warewulf and other management stuff if you need to start looking larger
scale.

-- 
Geoffrey D. Jacobs