From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Feb 7 14: 8: 2 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net (harrier.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.12]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6D2CB37B427 for ; Thu, 7 Feb 2002 14:07:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from pool0339.cvx22-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([209.179.199.84] helo=mindspring.com) by harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 16Ywhm-0005Kl-00; Thu, 07 Feb 2002 14:07:47 -0800 Message-ID: <3C62FA59.C925EB5E@mindspring.com> Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2002 14:06:17 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Sony} (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Matt Wilbur Cc: advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: diskless freebsd cluster References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Matt, if we could get someone interested in interviewing you, and taking pictures, etc. (of if you could take them) with a digital camera, this would make an excellent basis for an article in Daemon News! The best bet, from my perspective, is if you wrote the thing yourself, and/or press-released it. It's at least press-release worthy, if the client is happy with it. Personally, I really enjoy reading "workhorse" articles... Brett Glass, are you listening? I personally have too many irons in the fire right now, but I might be able to get to it near the end of this month or the start of next, if no one else is willing to grab it up immediately (hint hint). -- Terry Matt Wilbur wrote: > > Hi all, > > I just wanted to say, to the entire FreeBSD team, especially everyone > involved with pxe support, rc.diskless[1,2], mfs, and gigabit nic support, > THANKS! You ROCK! > > I just got a 16 node diskless cluster of 1.4GHz Athlons (dual 1GHz p3 > server) up and running 4.5-RELEASE, and it was SO much easier than it used > to be.. > > The cluster has two "primary" uses, one is to do high volume number > crunching, the other is for a parallelized port of one of our > toolkits for a particular customer, who is insisting on a Scyld Linux > "beowulf". The original plan was to port our crunching codes from FreeBSD > to Linux (sigh), but since it took about a day to build a second system > disk running FreeBSD (and a port would've taken at least a week or two), > that is far more cost effective in the short. Hopefully I can build a > mini scyld cluster for development only and we can stick with FreeBSD.. > > Why diskless? We're doing diskless because the codes we're currently > using are CPU intensive, with little file i/o, and because the lab it's > operating in has restricted access, its far easier to operate diskless for > media accounting reasons, especially if/when N goes from 16 to say, > 64..or if we want to wheel the rack out of the lab and operate > "outside". I'm getting 97% user CPU on all nodes when I hammer the system > with runs, I can live with that.. The network is 100baseT to the client > nodes, 1000baseSX server->switch. > > For what it's worth, the crunching used to happen on Origin 200s. Of two > primary codes we run, code A would take about the same time on freebsd on > a p3-1GHz as it did on a 270MHz r12000. Code B ran three times faster > on a p3-1GHz than on the 270MHz r12k. Our cost savings are phenomenal > using commodity hardware and a great OS. > > If anyone would find the setup/configuration of interest I can document > how I set it up and throw it up somewhere for your perusal.. > > again, THANK YOU! > Matt Wilbur > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Sat Feb 9 14:12:32 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mail.freebsdmall.com (adsl-63-206-96-214.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.206.96.214]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8A57A37B416 for ; Sat, 9 Feb 2002 14:12:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from www (www [127.0.0.1]) by mail.freebsdmall.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 531F62E854; Sat, 9 Feb 2002 14:12:30 -0800 (PST) To: advocacy@FreeBSD.org Cc: rab@freebsdmall.com Subject: Free Advocacy discs Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2002 14:12:30 -0800 From: Robert Bruce Message-Id: <20020209221230.531F62E854@mail.freebsdmall.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG We replicated an extra thousand of the FreeBSD 4.5 installation CDROM, which is disc #1 of the four disc set. This single disc contains everything necessary to install and run FreeBSD. These discs are available, for free, to anyone doing FreeBSD missionary work. So if you are planning an installathon, or speaking to a user group, please let me know, and I will send you some CDROMs to pass out. Try to allow plenty of lead time for shipping. These are loose, single CDROMs, with no packaging. To qualify for this offer, you need to have a track record of FreeBSD advocacy, or you need to have someone vouch for you (or, if that is too much hassle, you can pay the cost of the CDROMS (50 cents each) plus shipping). -bob bob@freebsdmall.com http://www.freebsdmall.com A Daemon on Every Desktop To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message