I am starting to build a cluster (so far only 6 boxen in total) but hopefully will have more soon. I am just wondering if any one here has any experiance in doing this, or if you wish to come and have fun if it has been on your "I reall should do that soon..." list.

There is an irc room #cluster on irc.governmentsecurity.org come by if you wish.

Thanks

Buzzons

PS all boxen are at the moment running

2.6.12-gentoo-r4

I have used clusters in the past for testing the secuirty of password hases, WEP, and 3d rendering. I have used Cluster Knoppix, which is bootable right from the CD and the nodes even connect to eachother automatically, as long as youre behind a router with DHCP. I have done this at home, and also in my computer lab at school on 20 p4 2.8 ghz 512 ddr machines that yielded some pretty quick cracks. The actual cluster software in cluster knoppix is called Open Mosix, but I have also heard of a program called chaos being used as well. A tip though for Open mosix, make sure to set the speed of the master node to be very low, so all the other nodes migrate processes from it. Just google to find the respective websites. What were you hoping to use the cluster for, anyway?

Ive dont exactly the same - except it was just a test and a PAIN cause i was using housemates computers - all high end PC's, linux didnt like the hardware at all, some had to use the 2.4 kernel, some worked on 2.6 .... was wierd errors all over the place - but all hardware problems... Other than that, they eventually worked ok...

Have used CHAOS and found it to be a lot less hassle than ClusterKnoppix. Even though they both use the same clustering software (OpenMosix) CHAOS seemed to just work straight out-of-the-box as it says it will, but ClusterKnoppix just proved to be a real PITA.

Give CHAOS a try, you'll be up and running in 10 mins