[Beowulf] newbie
Andrew M.A. Cater
amacater at galactic.demon.co.uk
Tue Apr 21 00:08:54 PDT 2009
On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 03:53:18PM +0200, Tomislav Maric wrote:
>
> _______________________________________________
> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing
> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
Welcome :)
Please try setting your mailer to send plain text rather than HTML
formatted mail.
Otherwise the sort of thing you see above happens :)
Start small: be prepared for your electricity bills to rise sharply.
Pick up two or three of the cheapest second hand computers you can find
- the sort of thing that your friends would throw out as too old. So
long as they have Ethernet cards, they'll be fine. Buy a cheap four port
Ethernet switch. Total expenditure: probably less than Euro 400.
[If you have money to spend: get four moderately expensive computers at
750 - 1000 Euro each: they'll have fairly fast processors, RAM and
gigabit network cards - ignore sound cards, graphics processors and so
on :) Add Euro 250 worth of RAM to each one. You can always sell them
again when you've finished.]
Install Linux on each computer: try and install the minimum necessary.
Teach yourself the basics of networking, fault finding. Get it to the point
where the machines can communicate with each other, you have
passwordless login between them using SSH and that sort of thing.
Be prepared to reinstall Linux a few times: be prepared to start again
if what you've done doesn't work - you'll waste time but you'll be
learning valuable skills, not least because you'll be your own system
administrator.
Grab a notebook, read the list archives. When you come across something
you need, note it down. Write a toy problem or two if it helps then run
them on your "Beowulf".
Then look at what you really want and work towards it. Ask questions
here - the regulars on the list are friendly, technically expert and the
signal-noise ratio is high. In general, don't ask the list to do your
college homework / first steps in programming / "I have an
assignment on computer clusters: can you tell me all about
Beowulfs and what they are good for" without
showing some work first - though someone will probably step in and help
with good grace anyway because its that sort of friendly list.
Have fun,
AndyC
More information about the Beowulf
mailing list