Difference: BigClusterProject20060411 (4 vs. 5)

Revision 52006-03-19 - TWikiGuest

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 name="DuckyHomework" 

 Big Cluster Project 11 April 2006
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+(Note: this page is under construction and hasn't been announced yet, so is in massive flux.)
 Come help us make a big parallel cluster on 11 April 2006!   
 If you are in CS 521, you'll get five points credit for participating (details below).
  It's after instruction ends but before exams start, so you have no excuse.
  It'll be right before Tuesday Tea.
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+ Brett says he'll get Google to buy pizza for us.
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+ Brett has a budget from Google for pizza that he's eager to spend on this event.
  It'll be fun!
 

We want to get a lot of computers, where "a lot" is on the order of 40.
  CS 521 credit 
To get CS 521 credit, you need to do the following:
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+ Burn a (tbd) CD. 
 BCCD, with booting instructions -- advertised as working on Macs with different downloads
 
  Boot your laptop from that CD to make sure that the burn was correct, that your system will boot, etc.
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+ Burn a bootable BCCD CD (see below).
  Boot your laptop from that CD at home to make sure that the burn was correct, that your system will boot, etc.
  Bring your computer(s) and the CD to (tbd location).  Laptops are preferable, since we might be limited in the number of power outlets we will have. 
 If you don't have a laptop, you can bring in your desktop; we will have at least one monitor that we can swap around.
  If you don't have a laptop, you can borrow one for four hours (not renewable) from Koerner Library or Woodward Library, Circulation Desk, entrance level.
 
  Be fully prepared to boot your own computer as a slave, and to help out anyone who showed up who is not in 521 (i.e. who has even less experience than you have).
 

 Making a bootable CD
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+Making a bootable CD is not as easy as you might think.  On Linux, there are some unspecified issues with cdburner for kernels newer than @@@; there is some documentation on the Web that says they have been fixed in 2.6.11, but DuckySherwood had problems even with 2.6.11.  @@@ 
 http://www.geocities.com/potato.geo/bootlinuxcd.html
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+There are a number of different distributions of MPI/LAM, but Ducky recommends BCCD.  It is specifically designed for educational use, and has a PPC version so that Mac users can play too.  Note that Ducky is in the middle of trying to veify that it works, but hasn't yet.
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+These are links that Ducky is in the process of looking at in trying to figure stuff out... 
 Mandrake bootable CD instructions:
 
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-cooker-ppc&m=99441208917647&w= 
 IBM http://penguinppc.org/ppc64/power-bootable-iso/
 
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/bootcd.html#creating-the-image

From http://www.geocities.com/potato.geo/bootlinuxcd.html:
First, download the iso.img.gz  file. Decompress it with gunzip and burn it to a CD (I'd suggest a CDRW) using cdrecord or if you want to do it from Windows, you probably just need to rename it to blah.iso and Easy CD Creator or whathaveyou should be able to burn it.

Eroaster

Macs: 

 There is some shareware called BootCD that makes a boot CD ?from currently running OS?
  LiveLinux distros of Ubuntu
  RockLinux http://www.rocklinux.org/149.html
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+ Linux 
Making a bootable CD on Llinux is nowhere near as easy as it ought to be.  It's probably not something that you do all the time, so you might have challenges with media, drivers, kernels, applications, or all of the above.  

On Linux, there are some unspecified issues with cdburner for kernels newer than @@@; there is some documentation on the Web that says they have been fixed in 2.6.11, but DuckySherwood had problems even with 2.6.11.  @@@

If you have trouble burning from Linux, you can is burn a CD from Windows and then boot that from Linux.  Note that if everything is working, you should not need to burn anything except an iso file (Windows) or an iso.img file (Linux) to your CD.  Note that if everything is working, you should be able to stick the CD in your drive and restart; you should not need to hold down magic key combinations 

 Ducky successfully burned BCCD from Windows and booted on Linux (Kannotix distro, 2.6.11 kernel) using just what Windows offered (::RecordNow, which appears to be distributed with IBM Thinkpads).
 

 Other distributions of bootable Linux with clustering tools: 
 
 http://www.geocities.com/potato.geo/bootlinuxcd.html (no reports yet from students who have successfully booted from this)
  RockLinux http://www.rocklinux.org/149.html (no reports yet from students who have successfully booted from this)

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