Setting up a UNIX cluster

[Lucas Holt]

Depending on the number of systems to manage, you can either use a PXE boot or do individual installs. 

When I was a student at emu, I setup a cluster of 22 dells with midnightbsd to build packages on our magus system and created some Shell scripts to sync all the nodes software and created ssh keys and had a management script to push down configuration changes. We only had an old netgear 10/100 switch and were h behold an osx box doing nat so it was faster to install rather than pxe boot

We bought some low cost shelving from Home Depot to hold them and put them in an unused classroom

Lucas Holt

> On Mar 10, 2014, at 9:44 AM, Brian Kim <briansan24 at gmail.com> 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?
> 
> Thanks!
> -- 
> Best Wishes,
> Brian Kim
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