[Bioclusters] Debian cluster

[Nox]

Wow, nice info, thanks,
Ill pass this onto my developer.

Thanks again

On Fri, 2003-09-19 at 16:25, Joseph Landman wrote:
> Having written automated installation tools for IRIX (Autoinst, the
> predecessor to Roboinst, used for a number of years), and looking at
> things like SI and other imaging tools, I personally prefer the
> non-image based solutions, as they do not introduce this new layer of
> management you have to worry about (image management) and debug. 
> Imaging is great for some things (laptop loads, etc).  
> 
> FAI looks like they do some things right.  It looks like they do not
> have an automatic method of BOOTP mac address harvesting though.  That
> could be quite painful on a reasonable sized cluster.  There are a
> number of ways to handle that, including using File::Tail on the
> /var/log/messages for your dhcp server.  From this, you can have a
> script automatically build your dhcpd.conf file, populate your
> /etc/hosts, etc.
> 
> Note:  Autoinst booted IRIX into a diskless mode, handled all the disk
> partitioning and file system formatting, package installation, etc. 
> Rules built in to it (much like the FAI classes) allowed for multiple
> mixed hardware types with package/layout variations.  Pissed the network
> people off though... it was faster to use this than to do a fresh
> install via CD.  Imaging over the network was marginally faster to get
> the image onto the disk, but then you had to do the post image
> processing to make the machine unique, and sometimes (in those days) the
> image transfer was not successful, so you had to do it again over poor
> networks.  The package method returned a code as to whether or not the
> package install succeeded, so that inst could handle problems.  All in
> all the package method turned out to be significantly better in terms of
> ease of use and reliability.
> 
> Please let us know how it goes.   
> 
> On Fri, 2003-09-19 at 00:52, Nox wrote:
> > We have begun to investigate FAI and Debian for our clustering 
> > solutions.
> > 
> > I have always been partial to Debian, its my OS of choice,
> > has been for yrs.
> > 
> > So when I discovered the clustering tools, I was excited.
> > (FAI, Fully Automated Install)
> > 
> > Does anyone have experience with this?
> > Pitfalls, things to watch for,
> > success stories etc.
> > 
> > from my perspective:
> > 
> > Debian offers ease of use
> > Updates are a snap (apt-get) --Including security
> > Ability to be a very minimalist system
> > Quick access to Biotech tools (bioperl as an example)
> > 
> > We currently use debian as our Halted Firewall as well.
> > 
> > Thanks in advance
> > 
> > Nox
> > GenMicro Systems
> > 
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