RC5 & network help please

[Phil00]

Hi, I have a load of old hardware lying about and I thought I may be able to put it to some good use (RC5 for TA). I was just wondering how best to set them to work. i.e. should I have each machine running idividually and then connect them to a network, or have them in a cluster working together as one (can this be done easily?)

I really don't want to have to beg/borrow/steal a hard-disk, monitor, gfx card etc for each machine. I would prefer it if I could only use the bare minimum of hardware. If I could connect all of these machines to one central server, can this then assign work to each individual machines on the network as if it was just one large machine? Can Linux do this and if so, how hard will it be to achieve?

Sorry about all of the questions, but I am pretty new to networking and I am not even sure if I am getting my point accross properly. Hopefully, some of you more experienced people will be able to help me....

Thanks in advance,
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Phil.
RC5 Stats

 

[Poof]

Phil - as a min., if you can get a floppy drive and a NIC for each of those machines, then you can download and use Kilowatt's Klinux floppy-based linux distribution, which is already pre-configured with the RC5 client.

If your hardware is nearly (or preferably) identical, you could maybe even setup the config on one machine with a video card and monitor, and then replicate that config for each of the machines in your herd (which can then run headless, ala a "crack rack&quot.

If you anticipate a large number of returns from these machines or only want the machines to flush on an irregular basis out over the net, you could setup your own pproxy locally to store a load of blocks to feed the herd, and that pproxy will upload the stash.

Hopefully this will help you get started!!!

 

[Phil00]

Thanks, that was what I originally had in mind, but I started thinking (I know, I shouldn't do that) that with a little messing about (I hope) that I could just have in each machine - CPU, ram, NIC, mobo all controlled by a central machine. This way I can put the "crack rack" outside in my garage with no worries about the hard/floppy disks becoming damaged because of the cold. These machines will be connected to my main machine which could act as a fileserver....the only problem is how I go about it. Is there a software app that can co-ordinate all of the machines remotely? Or can Linux do this aka some of the large supercomputers?

If I can't manage this, I think I will use the KLinux floppy.

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Phil.
Abit VP6
Dual PIII700's @ 1000
2x256Mb Crucial CAS2 @ CAS2
2xIBM Deskstar 75GXP's in RAID0
RC5 Stats

 

[Poof]

If you're adventurous, I may have just the solution for you. I haven't had chance to do this myself but you could try running a Mosix cluster. One of my co-workers is running this on his home LAN and he thinks it's great.

Now... basically this linux cluster is created by replacing your distro's default kernel with the mosix one and then modifying a config file that's basically a map file for each node in the cluster. You'd then have a master machine that can control the others and telnet into them when needed.

The issue you might run into is libraries as I think it requires the newer libc 6 libraries. If you can floppy boot your machines and then maybe have them mount, via NFS, a remote hard drive for everything else - AND do so with the mosix kernel... that would be cool!

You may want to check out the site to see what is possible but as far as I've been hearing, this may be about the easiest and quickest way to get clustering up and running.

With respect to RC5, you can have you central hard drive divided into directories, each containing files to run an instance of RC5 for each of your machines....

Would be interesting how something like this would turn out if do-able...

 

[DanC]

Actually... Klinux will do the whole thing rather nicely.
Were it not for the space constraints on the distro KW would have included telnet.
There's not a lot to look at on the client though.

You might attach one keyboard, mouse, monitor somewhere nearby and use a KVM to manage nodes.
Another idea I had was a ping utility to see what nodes are online, and what nodes aren't.

Klinux is so rock-solid though, there's very little need to monitor. The nodes just do what they're supposed to.... CRACK - forever.

 

[Phil00]

WOW, thanks Poof...that is exactly what I was looking for. Mosix looks real good and is ideal for my needs (1 monitor etc)

Thanks again.
----------------
Phil.
Abit VP6
Dual PIII700's @ 1000
2x256Mb Crucial CAS2 @ CAS2
2xIBM Deskstar 75GXP's in RAID0
RC5 Stats