From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 10 14:29:07 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 7ACEE811 for ; Mon, 10 Mar 2014 14:29:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.rlwinm.de (mail.rlwinm.de [IPv6:2a01:4f8:140:72e1::ac16:e45e]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4058BF11 for ; Mon, 10 Mar 2014 14:29:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: from hexe.rlwinm.de (p54BC4096.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [84.188.64.150]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mail.rlwinm.de (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 5EFC1BBEB for ; Mon, 10 Mar 2014 14:29:05 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <531DCC30.7050505@rlwinm.de> Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 15:29:04 +0100 From: Jan Bramkamp User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.3.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Setting up a UNIX cluster References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 14:29:07 -0000 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.