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I tried an openMOSIX cluster back in the day when it was fashionable. Cluster-Knoppix could transform a bunch of old pc's in an instant SSI cluster with almost

I tried an openMOSIX cluster back in the day when it was fashionable. Cluster-Knoppix could transform a bunch of old pc's in an instant SSI cluster with almost zero configuration needed. Though I know it is not the most efficient way, I miss the simplicity of it. A shell script that simply launches a new process on the most idle node of a network would be enough to get back some of that experience. Live migration would be even better, almost perfect for that. Hope some day I can easily build a bewolf cluster out of my ARM SBC's with an experience similar to the old days of Cluster-Knoppix.

zozbot234 6y ago
Linux is getting features for process checkpointing and migration in the mainline kernel, see the CRIU (checkpoint and restore in userspace) patchset. It needs proper namespacing of all system resources, but we're not far from that with all the container-enabling features that Linux has.
bloopernova 6y ago
I remember back in the early 2000s thinking how cool it was that I had distributed C compilers helping my Gentoo installs along. I really wanted to set up a university computer lab such that when computers are idle, their CPU cycles are donated to some massively parallel simulations. Worked great on small scale, but I moved on before we implemented it on a larger scale.
- tyrrvk 6y ago
  you just described HTC Condor! Not the parallel part per se.. https://research.cs.wisc.edu/htcondor/ https://research.cs.wisc.edu/htcondor/
- astrange 6y ago
  Well, that's just F@H/R@H/BOINC. But I think there's some ethical considerations before you sign up all your computers for that, or at least you should check the electricity cost.
  - bloopernova 6y ago
    The goal was to use spare lab computer cycles to run academic sim jobs on.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
What would you consider the current state-of-the-art in Open Source SSI cluster software? The vast majority of solutions seem to have gone fallow.
- marcodiego 6y ago
  Popcorn linux: http://popcornlinux.org/ http://popcornlinux.org/
  - e12e 6y ago
    I couldn't figure out from the page, maybe I missed it - what's the filesystem/storage like? A cluster fs? Nfs?

zozbot234 6y ago

Linux is getting features for process checkpointing and migration in the mainline kernel, see the CRIU (checkpoint and restore in userspace) patchset. It needs proper namespacing of all system resources, but we're not far from that with all the container-enabling features that Linux has.

bloopernova 6y ago

I remember back in the early 2000s thinking how cool it was that I had distributed C compilers helping my Gentoo installs along. I really wanted to set up a university computer lab such that when computers are idle, their CPU cycles are donated to some massively parallel simulations. Worked great on small scale, but I moved on before we implemented it on a larger scale.

tyrrvk 6y ago
you just described HTC Condor! Not the parallel part per se.. https://research.cs.wisc.edu/htcondor/ https://research.cs.wisc.edu/htcondor/
astrange 6y ago
Well, that's just F@H/R@H/BOINC. But I think there's some ethical considerations before you sign up all your computers for that, or at least you should check the electricity cost.
- bloopernova 6y ago
  The goal was to use spare lab computer cycles to run academic sim jobs on.

JoshTriplett 6y ago

What would you consider the current state-of-the-art in Open Source SSI cluster software? The vast majority of solutions seem to have gone fallow.

marcodiego 6y ago
Popcorn linux: http://popcornlinux.org/ http://popcornlinux.org/
- e12e 6y ago
  I couldn't figure out from the page, maybe I missed it - what's the filesystem/storage like? A cluster fs? Nfs?