[BProc] Clustermatic, NFS, and MPI

[Larry B. <ba...@us...>]

Jack,

I've been using the Clustermatic distribution CD kit from March 2002 with my
own modifications to the beoboot scripts so that I could use NFS with
locking from the slaves to the master.  I have posted my modifications to
the mailing list previously, but I can send them to you as an attachment, if
you like.  I use MPICH V1.2.4 from ANL, which has support for bproc (i.e.,
it uses bpsh instead of sh/ssh).  I had to make 1 or 2 changes to their
compilation scripts (because I use Intel's Fortran and C++ compilers?), but
I had no trouble with mpirun with or without the -nolocal option
(excludes/includes master node).  I can send those modifications to you as
well.

We do not yet run anything real.  I have a 3-node cluster: a 1.6A GHz master
with 1 GB DDR2100 RAM and a 100 GB ATA100 disk, and 2 1.8A GHz diskless
slaves with 2 GB DDR2100 RAM each.  I have run the MPICH test suite, and a
couple of our own MPI programs.  I plan to get serious after New Year's
(including CPU upgrades to 2.4B GHz each, and possibly 2 more slave nodes).
I don't know if the new version of Clustermatic will set me back -- I
haven't downloaded it yet.

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
ba...@us...

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