[Beowulf] [OT] MPI-haters

[Prentice Bisbal]

You joke, but I actually did, sort of. I didn't do it myself, but at the 
place I was working at at the time (~2000 or 2001) we built a 10-node 
Linux cluster, and kickstarted it with a boot floppy containing the 
kickstart . I can't remember if the rest of the OS was installed over 
the network or from a CD in the local CD drive, but the nodes definitely 
booted of a floppy and read the kickstart file from the floppy. The 
physicists were very hands-on at the time, and they set this up 
themselves, since they bought it with their budget, but I remember being 
there when they were booting off a floppy, one node at a time.

USB was around at the time, but I don't think the small USB thumb drives 
were available or common then. If they were available, I'm sure they 
were still a lot more $$$ than a floppy disk, and I'm not so sure Linux 
had good USB support back then. I don't remember USB thumb drives being 
common until 2003 or 2004, and they were pretty pricey initially, about 
$1/MB, IIRC

Prentice

On 03/10/2016 02:18 PM, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote:
> Yeah, and you'll be telling stories about how you brought up your first cluster using 3.5" floppies.
>
> Jim Lux
> (818)354-2075 (office)
> (818)395-2714 (cell)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Beowulf [mailto:beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org] On Behalf Of Prentice Bisbal
> Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2016 10:49 AM
> To: beowulf at beowulf.org
> Subject: Re: [Beowulf] [OT] MPI-haters
>
> On 03/10/2016 01:34 PM, Jeff Becker wrote:
>> On 03/10/2016 10:32 AM, Prentice Bisbal wrote:
>>> This list used to get A LOT more traffic. Not sure what happened over
>>> the past few years. I miss the witty banter and information I used to
>>> get from all that traffic, but I definitely don't miss Vincent.
>> :-)
> It just occurred to me that if you know who Vincent or RGB is, you're probably an old-timer on this list now.
> _______________________________________________
> 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