[Beowulf] Live Implementation for Clusters

[Ellis Wilson]

> An enhancement you might like to think of is wiring
any second on-board
> gigabit ports to a dedicated switch for MPI traffic.
> (See Beowulf passim for discussions on the merits of
various switches)

Actually, its funny you say that because as of right
now the script 
serves in a (very rough) DHCP capacity that seems to
work best on a 
dedicated switch.  My work today was to change that,
but it might be 
good to make two functions so one might choose. 
Anyhow, the way that it 
currently works in my script is:
1. Fire up the master node, which configures itself as
192.168.0.250 and 
starts an NFS server in its home folder as .ssh
2. Fire up each node, running the script, which gets
an IP from the 
standard DHCP server, connects to the NFS server,
grabs a file called IP 
from it and assigns its IP based on that and
increments the IP file on 
the masters NFS server.  Unmount NFS, restart network,
remount NFS, run 
SSH passwordless stuff (which is placed into the .ssh
folder, handily 
available now to any PC connected to the NFS server)
and is ready to go.

I was going to change this so that it doesn't grab an
IP file but rather 
simply appends its standard assigned ip address to a
file on the Masters 
NFS server and when all your nodes are up, one issues
a command from the 
Master to refresh all the Hosts and Machine files on
the nodes and 
master using this file with all the random ip
addresses in it (obviously 
Node1 in hosts is the first IP, and so on).  This way
I can take 
advantage of my school using a non 192.168.***.***
network.  I tried the 
old system using this, the master sets its ip as
192.168.0.250, and yet 
the nodes don't seem to find it.  Not sure why.

Ellis




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