Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 10:42:50 -0400 From: Brian Kim <briansan24@gmail.com> To: Jan Bramkamp <crest@rlwinm.de> Cc: "freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org" <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Setting up a UNIX cluster Message-ID: <F5AF7F9A-4476-4433-A73C-0A8011B2BCB8@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <531DCC30.7050505@rlwinm.de> References: <CA%2BWSJLeMbN_Nj1Hdo%2BCdbppnwPcAi_a86G85djYoVrqQU3DxLg@mail.gmail.com> <531DCC30.7050505@rlwinm.de>
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Dear Jan and Mickey, Thank you both for your beautifully prompt and succinct responses. They have= thoroughly answered the various facets of my inquiry... @mickey: thanks for the cgynus suggestion. Never even considered the option.= .. Best, bk Best, bk > On Mar 10, 2014, at 10:29 AM, Jan Bramkamp <crest@rlwinm.de> wrote: >=20 >> On 10.03.2014 14:44, Brian Kim wrote: >> Dear friends, >>=20 >> 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. Therefor= e, >> before any discussion of programming begins, I want the students to be >> familiarized with the UNIX environment so that they can gcc all their cod= e >> and not have to be chained down to IDE's. >> In order to accomplish this, I have amassed a number of old Dell computer= s >> 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 setti= ng >> 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? >=20 > 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. > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"=
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