[Beowulf] Beowulf on head Core2Duo/8RAM/8800GTX(4 CUDA) + 2 nodes - SonyPS3 + AlliedTelesyn GLAN Switch running "home-made CFD-program

[Mark Hahn]

> I have such a configuration and now I'm interested, where can I obtain
> Beowulf & PVM, in "Operating systems. Internals and Design Principles. 4-th

why PVM?  it's a fine system, but MPI has, practically speaking, obsoleted it.

> Ed." by W.Stollings, said that i can obtain Beowulf from
> www.beowulf.org.

beowulf is not really a singular thing, but a concept.  there are many
instances which are downloadable and relatively turnkey if you're not 
very picky.  Oscar, Rocks, Perceus/Warewulf, etc.

> But I cann't find the path to download. The same is with
> PVM. By the way, what OS should i use: Fedora-based Yellow Dog Linux and
> Fedora for Head; NetBSD everywhere or something else? I am new in Linux,

you should DEFINITELY use the same OS on all nodes.  mixing OSs merely
adds support issues and complexity.

if you simply have a handful of machines, I think you should take 
the lowest-tech approach: install a comfortable distro on all of 
them, and you're done.  distros like fedora already include working 
versions of MPI (indeed sometimes even PVM).  for a personal cluster,
you don't necessarily need anything else: schedulers, monitoring,
private networks, etc.  it's not absolutely necessary, but the first
feature I'd add would be a shared filesystem (just an NFS export from
somewhere).

> this cluster is intended for my scientific activity to make a work, that
> would make possible to me to became Ph.D. in heat-transfer coupled with
> hydrodynamics.

well, I think there's more to becoming a phd than running sims on a cluster ;)