gentoo cluster suggestions/recommendations

[jdgill0]

Let me state the scenario I have:

* I have a working Gentoo system on an Intel P2 333 MHz machine ... I have full control of this machine ... I will use this machine as the master node

* The college has a computer lab consisting of about 24 Intel P4 machines with 512M of ram each

* I am not allowed to dual boot the computers (i.e. tamper with the hard drives), nor would I be allowed to enable network booting in the bios (at least I am +90% sure I would not be allowed) ... hence I am looking to boot the nodes with a floppy disk

* I would however be allowed to do a diskless type bootup of Gentoo on them, to allow using them as a cluster during the night hours, weekends, and holidays

* The nodes would have to obtain an IP address from the school's dhcp server

* I will need to run mpich on the cluster ... I am currently using this on a dual AMD MP machine and is not a problem in itself to setup

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What I am hoping to do is be able to enter the lab late in the evening, reboot the computers with a floppy disk (hopefully being able to remove the floppy after bootup), start the mpich program from the master node, then shutdown the program the next morning and reboot the computers before the lab would open to the students ... although this may seem like a lot of trouble, it would be a great benifit to our research.

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Given the above factor's, I am looking for the simplest setup ... I have little real world experience with cluster setups .... all recommendations and suggestions are welcomed

Thank you

[jjasghar]

there's a live cd version of distcc i know of, google it you'll find it. i bet there's an openmosix version out there too but that might be alittle harder to set up. you realize thought each machine you'll have to shutdown and take out the cd? i guess you could write a bash script that reboots them all by sshing in and sending a reboot command, but you'll have to be there to get each cd....

just a suggestion
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[dkenn]

If you like the sound of openmosix, you might check out clusterknoppix, even though it's not gentoo-based. This, however, is not an option if you are limited to booting off of floppies... Indeed, I think that you may be putting a good deal more work into this if you need to have nodes that boot off of floppies, though I think it's certainly feasible.

[jdgill0]

These are nice ideas ... I have thought about livecds, however that would require me to go to each machine in the morning time and remove the cd for reboot ... plus I would have to leave the cd in the computer ... would really like to be able to shutdown/reboot the machines remotely

I would like to do a "diskless" type boot, where you initiate the boot with a floppy disk instead of through a network boot through the bios? ... the ltsp.org site pointed to http://www.rom-o-matic.net for creating "bootrom floppies" that initiate a network boot ... has anyone done this by chance?

So, that's where I am currently with my thinking ... to do a "diskless" boot, but instead of initiating the boot through the bios network boot, use the floppy bootrom at the rom-o-matic site