Re: What can I do with six new publicly available computers?
Hello Mitja,
>From your description below I understand exactly where you come from (I
have been there too ;-)
If I am correct than you have been using mainly Windows until now and find
Linux pretty cool and was thinking now about setting up this "community
project". First of all, thats a nice idea. Now lets walk through this in
slow motion, shall we ?
First decide (more specifically) what services each machine should REALLY
offer. Dont try to do all in one go.
1) Do you really need a cluster ?
It requires quite some knowledge to set it up and also maintain it.
2) Perhaps you should "Tune" your spec a bit so that it becomes manageable
by a single admin.
I believe what you want is a setup similar to this one.
- Machine A: Fileserver
- Machine B: Web Proxy + Remote desktop server
Other machines (4 left): (Clients)
Version a) The Clients have the Applications installed locally
Version b) The Clients Connect by Remote Desktop sharing to Machine B
As you can see both variants have their advantages in regard to
maintenance, memory, network usage etc.
I wouldnt want to use a video editing application via Remote desktop
sharing, while textediting could even be done in a web interface.
If you really want to go for a cluster I would recommend "Linux Enterprise
Cluster: Build a Highly Available Cluster with Commodity Hardware and Free
Software (Paperback) by Karl Kopper " ISBN 1593270364.
But let that not fool you that you will need quite some time to fully
understand what you can do and cant do on Linux - especially with a
cluster setup, however the book should help to jumpstart the ambitious
effort you have.
BTW: Where in Slovenia is it going to be ?
Best regards
Nils Valentin
Tokyo / Japan
http://www.be-known-online.com
> Hello
>
> I would like to ask for some advice. I just need some basic guidelines
> as I'm quite new to Linux and never took care of more than one computer.
> I will then google around for details or ask in a separate thread. Some
> link would be greatly appreciated.
> I'm taking care of six new computers running Linux in a (also new)
> multimedia centre. All of them are publicly available and anyone can use
> them. Now users can just surf the web, but I want to offer them more. If
> someone needs to write texts and do other things, I would like set-up a
> user account for him, so he can do (almost) all he wants.
> Now the questions:
> 1. I was thinking to take one computer, make a file server (maybe also
> web-server) out of it and replace it with an old one running as thin
> client. Is there some other way of making a users /home/user directory
> available regardless of which computer he is using?
> 2. In the centre we do a lot of video editing using Premiere on window$.
> I know some Linux video editing software but the problem is that just
> one computer is powerful enough to do the job. If I make cluster out of
> few computers then the thing would be strong enough. The thing I'm not
> sure is: can I use a normal software or it should be specially made for
> clusters?
> 3. If I make cluster out of all six computers I would get some kind of
> mini-supercomputer. Question: can computers work in a cluster and at the
> same time one of them is used for surfing the web and another one is
> used for video editing, thus in need of more resources?
> 4. If someone has some other idea on how to use this six computer I
> would realy like to hear it. In the centre we are trying to promote
> Linux and other Open Source software and make resources we have as
> useful to the people as possible.
>
> thanks
>
> --
> Mitja Podreka
> http://mitja.kizej.net
>
>
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