Openmosix and distcc...

malloc · l33t Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 762

Ok i am very seriously thinking about instaling the openmosix sources and building a 5 box cluster to boot up my little network. My question is simple and i'm probably just beeing a bit blind about it.
Well the question is this, i know that the cluster will handle high load processes however will it also distribute the compile tasks between the nodes or do i have to use distcc the regular way to do this?
Thanks in advance

neysx · Retired Dev Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 795

You should use distcc because compile processes usually do not live long enough for omosix to migrate them.
You might be interested to know that the openmosix-howto has just been reviewed.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/openmosix-howto.xml
There is also a new diskless-howto, just in case.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/diskless-howto.xml
This thread might interest you as well
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=54913

renfield · n00b Joined: 23 Aug 2003 Posts: 18

While I await for people to solve my problem on the other thread, might as well help out.

Distcc does that, openmosix don't handle compile as a proces needs to run several seconds before it migrates, and according to the openmosix howto (if i remember), compiles are composed of diffrent mini porocesses that happens to fast before openmosix can catch em. Install both anyway if you want.

malloc · l33t Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 762

Wow thanks for the incredibly fast response guys.
neysx i've been looking at the how-to for a few days now and that was one of my biggest doubts. It looks like that the possibility of combining both openmosix and distcc will grant huge processing power to the cluster and that's great.
So off i go to build my cluster.
Thanks again guys

|Quantum| · Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 2:42 pm Post subject: What about this

I started clustering a few days ago.
It didn't escape my attention that there is an API to control the process of migrating under OpenMosix.
My question: isn't it possible to create a Mosix-aware make (or pmake)? The new make could for example query available nodes dynamically and dispatch parallel builds directly to the available nodes (or let OpenMosix do it, in any case make them migrate at once).
If not, why isn't it possible to let OpenMosix migrate directly on command? (but it *is* possible, otherwise there wouldn't be a command like 'migrate'...).

In the meantime I've configured my make to do -jx , where x = twice the number of available processors. This way I stress the host-cpu more, which results in more and slower processes, which can consequently migrate afterall. It works more or less for me