Re: MOSIX

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>]

>> Eray Ozkural <exa@ttnet.net.tr> writes:

 > Especially kernel patches are very boring to package, so the MOSIX
 > system has not been packaged yet.

 The fact that MOSIX is a kernel patch is not that problematic.  The
 problem is that it's very version dependant, it has this sick
 versionate thing (which incidentally is considered as a good thing by
 the Mosix group), and it's in general a PITA to work with because of
 the way the process migration is envisioned by the MOSIX developers.
 I intended (still do) to take some time to do the work, but I haven't
 managed to find a time slot big enough to do it.  If you check WNPP
 you'll see there's no entry for MOSIX.  I really don't want to
 discourage anyone else from starting this work.

 Some stuff will change for 2.4:  versionate will be a thing of the
 past (yay!), it sounds like it would not be so version specific, and
 in general it might be better.

 > Something to look for would be compatibility with current kernel
 > versions I guess. Do patches work all right for 2.2.14, etc?

 AFAIK, they do.  They should work with 2.2.15 and 2.2.16, too.

 > Except that, I think it would be like a kernel patch package, a
 > package for userland stuff, and a development package.

 Yes, that sounds about right.  There's also the file system and the
 (I beleive not yet released) shared memory thing, which might need of
 some extra packaging depending on how it's implemented.
 
 > That might not be quite the right path to hook up a distributed OS
 > anyway :) Seriously, I'm on the side of free software and MOSIX
 > guys seem to have made some progress recently. But I'm not that
 > sure how the Beowulf community takes MOSIX.

 The beowulf community?  What's that?  h/j.

 Seriously, MOSIX is a good thing if you pay attention to what you are
 doing (here I must say that I did have MOSIX running on a Debian
 cluster, that is, until I moved and the cluster had to stay behind),
 and it's relative easy to take advantage of once you understand what
 it does and what it doesn't, why and how.

 > As you know, someday there will be a free distributed OS that is
 > way better than anything else on the planet, but till that day grad
 > students have to undergo more torment.

 Weareundergoingenoughalreadythankyouverymuch. ;-)


                                        Marcelo