Re: Bug#97336: ITP: dsh -- dancer's shell, or a distributed shell.
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@cs.bilkent.edu.tr> cum veritate scripsit:
Hi Eray,
> > Do you mean, some architecture where a standard system-wide configuration
> > file exists so that mpich and dsh can rip off the list of machines from one
> > location?
>
> Yeah, definitely :) Not just mpich and dsh, but any package that is a beowuf
> program could use that. I have in mind a nice scripting environment not
> unlike the menu system.
I would be all for converting my packages toward such a mechanism.
They currently do not cooperate very well, and it deserves some
control.
Usually a sysadmin would install lam/mpich on one system, yet it seems like
people have to configure these two completely independent of
each other.
> Some standard location for beowulf configuration would be the first step.
>
> + /etc/beowulf
> |___ clusters -- names of clusters
> |___ cluster1
> |___ cluster2
hmm..
I guess having an /etc/beowulf/default.list would be nice.
(but should we be using the name "beowulf"?)
Where update-beowulf (or whatever else it may be called) can,
for example, generate /etc/mpich/machines.LINUX from the file.
> Specifying the content of those configuration files would be an important
> task :)
It should be everything that is required to generate all the configuration
files that is required ... ;-)
The MAC address, the IP, and possibly the hostname.
I doubt if there would be much benefit in having the
location of nfs-root centrally, but I guess people can prove me wrong.
> Then, some utility like `update-beowulf' could run package-specific filters.
> We can also provide system tools in beowulf packages with wrappers that
> automatically update their nodes list, etc.
That's the kind of thing I was also thinking about.
install-beowulf --add --group groupname --ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx --hostname name
--mac xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
might be one option.
Usually most programs only require the IP address of a beowulf node machine,
and which group that machine belongs to. (or that's my understanding.)
It would be useful to know the IP and also the architecture of the machine too.
> Now that fai is finally released we could also try to hook fai into all that.
> Of course, debian-installer development is going on and we should see how
> scriptable that is. We could certainly use a client/server version of
> debian-installer to do "magic-floppy" or netboot installs.
I was playing with bootable CD-Rom images to see how realistic it is
to do magic-CD-Rom kind of installs. It's rather more difficult
than I anticipated (my CD-RW drive burnt down... wow. Overheating).
> Surely these are off the top of my head. :) Kind of a wishlist as a suffering
> beowulf admin, and would be fun to implement.
This surely is quite exciting to implement, and dream about... ;-)
Let's keep this simple at first. Extending it to do more later
should not be too hard. And no doubt, someone will find something
more to add even if we think now that we've already added everything
that is requisite.
regards,
junichi
--
dancer@debian.org http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer
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