omuscd Files

openMosix User Space Cluster Daemon 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

omuscd is an User Space Cluster Daemon for use with the openMosix 2.6 kernel
extension for single-system image clustering.

If you experience difficulties, fully read the man page, the FAQ, and run the
daemon with debug logging enabled and then read your logs.

For community discussion and help, you can subscribe to the project mailing
lists and browse the archives provided by sourceforge. After checking that
your problem/question has not already been raised, then (and only then) 
send emails to <omuscd-gerneral@lists.sourceforge.net>.

WARNING: There is no security whatsoever, this is unlikely to change unless
the openMosix kernel itself is made secure. This type of single-system image
cluster should only be run on trusted networks (optionally linked by VPN
connections).


Concept
~~~~~~~
The concept behind omuscd is to provide a low impact daemon with a complete
and concise range of functionality (making it unnecessary to run any other
cluster management software) to permit the cluster node resources to be used
for the primary task, doing useful work.

The daemon provides process migration management and communication between
networked computers running openMosix enabled kernels to construct a cluster.
The topology of the cluster can take one of two forms. A controller/drone
topology (head nodes farms out running processes to nodes defined as slaves),
or co-operative peer to peer topology (a node running processes broadcasts a
process migration request, a free node then volunteers to take the process).

To date, the daemon does not provide process batch control, scheduling or
queueing, there are many suitable ways of controlling the start-up of tasks.

The daemon is designed for plug'n'pray use, and should determine sensible
configuration parameters for itself. Many of the operating parameters can
be customised via command line switches as required, the daemon itself can
provide "--help" on the available options.

The daemon can be controlled in real time by communication via TCP, for a
Human interface, simply Telnet into the daemon's listening IP/TCP port. 


Examples
~~~~~~~~
The "examples" directory contains :
Some extremely simple real time control scripts to show what can be easily
achieved.

The source and Makefile for a program (timewaster) suitable for load and
migration testing (the source for this program was taken from openMosix
user space tools developed for the 2.4 openMosix kernel).

Two Makefiles demonstrating one way of providing trivial process scheduling.


Version Numbering
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The first digit(s) are the version number.
The separator character is the release.
The final digit(s) are the revision number.

Currently designated releases are:

a - Alpha code, for test use by developers.
b - Beta code, for public testing, not considered enterprise ready.
d - Development\debug compiled, may contain "undocumented features".
r - Release code, stable, robust.
v - Release code, stable, optimised.

Example:

 "omuscd-0a1" - Version 0, Alpha, Revision 1
 
Daemons with the same version number are considered compatible with each other
at the api\network communications level, but may have a different feature set.


GPG-KEY
~~~~~~~
The GnuPG public key GPG-KEY may be used to authenticate the source archive and
rpm packages as being not tampered with.


REFERENCES
~~~~~~~~~~
The partial port "autodisc.tar.gz" to 2.6 of the 2.4 openMosix tools downloaded
from the openMosix sourceforge repository.
The openMosix 2.6 kernel patches (various versions, from various locations).
The 2.6 kernel source itself, downloaded from www.kernel.org.
The man pages and other documentation freely distributed as part of either
Fedora Core 4 or Fedora Core 6.
Advanced Linux Programming by CodeSourcery, published by New Riders (Peason
Education) www.advancedlinuxprogramming.com - If you download and use the
pdf book to write something, please buy the book, support the authors/publisher
and encourage more freely downloadable documentation.