A few Questions about clustering with Gentoo

whited · n00b Joined: 24 Jan 2006 Posts: 1

I have 7 computers with P3 1.1Ghz. Well they are not complete computers really. Continuing, I was orginally going to use slackware because I have been using it for a long time, but after compling the kernel like 7 times and not recieving a image and not being able to to boot the kernel I have decided to move to gentoo. I hear that gentoo has alot more ease with clustering. My Question is, would it be better for the nodes to just have the Min install on it or should I install the complete one? All Harddrives are atless 4GB, so space is not a problem. Another question is how much ram should I put in each node? They all that 2 DIMMs that max out at 256 each. What is the min requirement of memory that gentoo needs to boot? Would it be worth having nodes with 64 - 128 mb of RAM? If you have any suggestions on clusting for me please give them.

anonybosh · Guru Joined: 20 Nov 2005 Posts: 324

What exactly is your motivation behind clustering?
Are you trying to network boot?
As far as a full or minimal install, that all depends on how you intend to cluster. With openmosix, you could do an almost completely bare install; most other cases, you will probably need more.
I think the minimum is around 16 or 32 mb RAM, however usually the more the merrier.

vputz · Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 6:29 am Post subject:

Yep, figure out what you want to do with them first. If your computers have CD-roms, I'd suggest trying one of the pre-built clustering liveCDs like Quantian or BCCD to play around and get the hang of ideas first--then move up to Gentoo and a proper install (I'm still in that stage and am working up to netboot...)