On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 23:29 -0700, Robert LeBlanc wrote: > Hey guys, > > We have purchased a 65 node cluster of Opterons last December and I > have been following the development of the port off and on since then. > I think that the port may be mature enough to put on our production > environment just because I think that our biology applications could > benefit from a 64 bit compile. I am still sketchy on some things that > I hope you guys can help me out with. I hate to say this on a Debian list, but have you looked at Gentoo lately? > First, a program needs to be specifically written for 64 bits? Or by > just recompiling using 64-bit libs usually good enough? A properly written C program should work. The big problem area is the assumption that sizeof pointer == sizeof int == sizeof long. Programs written in other languages, where pointers are not visible to the programmer, should also just need to be recompiled. For example, FORTRAN doesn't care whether you are on a 16 bit or a 64 bit system. > Second, to install a 64-bit kernel, you have to be running a 64-bit > kernel using deb packages? > > If the second is the case, then third: I would have to compile a > 64-bit net boot kernel for the nodes. I have never cross-compiled and > tried once before without any luck. Any real other HOW-TOs for > compiling an AMD 64 kernel. By the way, the cross-compile that I tried > was AMD64 a few months ago from the docs on the port page. > > Forth, do you feel that the port is mature enough to run apps that > could run for months at a time? > > Fifth, would I be able to mirror the port for the cluster nodes? > > > > I am just worried that a lot can go wrong. I already will have to > break my mirror to install the AMD64 port side by side with the i386 > port. With a machine that is used to capacity most of the time, I hate > having lots of down time. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson, LA USA PGP Key ID 8834C06B I prefer encrypted mail. "The man who has gotten everything he wants is all in favor of peace and order." Jawaharlal Nehru
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