mother of god...... noobs got more questions

Crash893 · May 31, 2005

hey all,

first off i wanted to thank everyone for the help provided so far, im starting to move around a little more in the enviroment and poke around

my next question is

i just got another box donation ( same model pc)

is there anyway to "clulster" them together?

i run prime95 and any increase in horse power is always a good thing

any ideas let me know
( for now its jsut the two boxes that might change it might not)

PhoenixMDM · May 31, 2005

You can do some sort of beowulf cluster, but 90% of the time, you dont need / can't use a cluster.
If you wanna do distributed computing apps like folding/seti, i'd say individual comps are they way to go, but since prime95 takes so much processing power, it might actually be worth considering a cluster.

infinitevalence · May 31, 2005

Look at doing a diskless thin net, that way you have one box that has the operating system and then all the other boxes network boot off that. This reduces your power requirements as well as cost since all you need is mobo, cpu, mem, psu, and vid if not onboard. boot them up log on and run your progs. There is a decent guide linked in the FAH stickies.

Crash893 · May 31, 2005

id rather not go diskless ( this is at work i dont want alot of scraps around my desk they draw sticky fingers)

i have been asking around at the prime95 forums about bewolfing prime95 i havent heard much back

Gnufsh · May 31, 2005

I think it would be more efficient and easier to run an instance of prime95 on each computer (prime95 isn't multi threaded, is it?). If you want to cluster them, the easiest way is probably using openmosix:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/openMosix-HOWTO/

Crash893 · Jun 1, 2005

i know that running one on each is the better way to do it

but there are a few reasons i want to go with a cluster

1) to see if i can
2) these arent very fast machines it takes about 3 months to crank out a single number

so in a way im going aggenst the will of distrbuted computing and trying to make many machines do one task rather than many machines doing diffrent tasks twords the same goal

Gnufsh · Jun 1, 2005

Okay then. To work with a cluster in a single task, prime95 needs to be multi threaded. While prime95 does have two threads, calculations are only done in one. When you setup a cluster running openmosix, processes can migrate between machines, sort of like they can between cpus in a dual cpu system.

edit: quote from the prime95 FAQ:

I own a dual-CPU computer or several computers networked together. Can these CPUs work together on the same exponent to get results faster?

No. It is not uncommon for the program to read and write nearly 100MB of data every second. This is far too much data to transfer around the network in a timely manner.

Although, a program could be written for dual-CPU systems (it would be quite time-consuming), the machine will still get more throughput by working on separate exponents.

It is still fun, however, to setup an openmosix cluster (I did it for a while with 3 computers running gentoo a couple years ago).

Arkaine23 · Jun 1, 2005

Another small way to play with clustering is to setup distcc, which is a daemon to distributed work for compiling with gcc. So if you're installing something from source, all the nodes setup with distcc would work on the compile simultaneously. This is great if you're using gentoo....

Vertical_Zer0 · Jun 2, 2005

That's a good point. Using distcc to bootstrap during the gentoo install cuts the compile time by quite a bit. I'm sure distcc can help other compiles as well - such as the ridiculously long openoffice app!

Crash893 · Jun 3, 2005

wow you guys really took the learning curve to a new level.

mother of god...... noobs got more questions

Crash893

"The man in black fled across the desert,

PhoenixMDM

Piano Man

infinitevalence

Member

Crash893

"The man in black fled across the desert,

Gnufsh

Senior Member

Crash893

"The man in black fled across the desert,

Gnufsh

Senior Member

Arkaine23

Captain Random Senior Evil

Vertical_Zer0

Member

Crash893

"The man in black fled across the desert,

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