Re: What can we learn from Scyld?
Drake Diedrich (Drake.Diedrich@anu.edu.au) said:
> From what I've read on the same mailing lists I understand that Scyld are
> using either a modified PBS or OpenPBS.
pbspro is outright implementing a version for scyld, i think. openpbs
works with some hackage. but no queing system is really necesary to
use scyld (though it sure seems like lots of people want one )
[ snip a lot of queing options ]
i hate queuing software. especially this week. but yes, it's
software that lots of people on larger systems (or with many users)
want. PBS is overkill, terribly complex, and damn near impossible to
fix when it breaks, but it seems like the defacto (and posix, i think )
standard.
> Another area that we are weak is in network filesystems, but then
> everyone is as far as I know so we aren't really behind the 8-ball. It
> would be nice to be out in front with solid well documented easily
> configured DFS/AFS/Coda/Intermezzo/Mosix systems instead of just grotty old
> NFS. Does Scyld have anything new there?
none of those file sytems have much to do with high performance
computing. AFS has the authenication pains. Coda and intermezzo fall
under 'distributed' more than 'high performance'. and i'm not sure
what 'dfs' is, but i would bet the 'd' stands for 'distributed'.
yeah, yeah, we could have a big ol' flame war about what is or is not
a beowulf. i'm saying it's a pile of workstations for high
performance computing. it's subtle, yes.
anyways, in regards to file systems i'll be packaging up pvfs one of
these days (i finally sent an ITP out. heh ). it's a parallel file
system for linux clusters. not the most robust, but you can get some
insane MB/sec numbers on some classes of file operations. makes a
real nice scratch space to hold data before dumping it to a more
permanent store when your job is done.
scyld handles file systems by not handling them at all. the slave
nodes have nothing on them. ok, maybe 30 mb of standard libraries
(like libc ). but the rest of the libraries a program needs are
copied over at runtime. i think space on the head node is
nfs-exported out if programs have to deposit file tidbits. pvfs also
works on scyld, which might be a better option. so no, scyld does not
offer "scyldFS" or something like that.
==rob
--
Rob Latham: linux A-Team Bethlehem, PA USA
EAE8 DE90 85BB 526F 3181 1FCF 51C4 B6CB 08CC 0897
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