Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 15:29:04 +0100 From: Jan Bramkamp <crest@rlwinm.de> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Setting up a UNIX cluster Message-ID: <531DCC30.7050505@rlwinm.de> In-Reply-To: <CA%2BWSJLeMbN_Nj1Hdo%2BCdbppnwPcAi_a86G85djYoVrqQU3DxLg@mail.gmail.com> References: <CA%2BWSJLeMbN_Nj1Hdo%2BCdbppnwPcAi_a86G85djYoVrqQU3DxLg@mail.gmail.com>
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On 10.03.2014 14:44, Brian Kim wrote: > Dear friends, > > I am currently a teaching assistant for a freshman programming course at > Villanova University. Gloriously enough, we are teaching the C language. > The majority of the students have not had any previous experience in > programming so the extent of their computing knowledge is limited to the > grotesque Windows operating system that they have grown up with. Therefore, > before any discussion of programming begins, I want the students to be > familiarized with the UNIX environment so that they can gcc all their code > and not have to be chained down to IDE's. > In order to accomplish this, I have amassed a number of old Dell computers > that the department has long abandoned and I wish to set up a computer > cluster running FreeBSD. I personally do not have any experience in setting > up clusters and was hoping to request any instructional advice in this > regard. > I have come across this paper ( > http://people.freebsd.org/~brooks/papers/bsdcon2003/fbsdcluster.pdf) that > describes the process of setting up a BSD cluster with 300 nodes but I > found the language to be somewhat dense. There is also the fact that I do > not have any specialized hardware other than a bunch of old computers. > Assuming that I have a network switch, could anyone help me out with a > starting point? 1. Configure a test system to boot from PXE. 2. Build a PXE boot environment for the test system with DHCP, TFTP and NFS. 3. Build a generic PXE boot image your systems. 4. Decide how to administer the cluster. I can recommend ansible.
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