On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Prentice Bisbal wrote:

This brings up something else I was wondering about: If you truly strip down the OS running the nodes so that its just a tiny kernel and only the essential libraries, the users would have to compile all their software (assuming they compile their own code, like they do here) statically linked.

I have been a user on clusters were even a full-blown install was badly done or nodes were not kept in sync, so I could only rely on the kernel and few essential libraries. Depending on the situation I have chosen to link statically or to install all the required shared libs in my home dir. There's no reason not to do it system-wide if you can cope with the disadvantages: - static linking might require a relinking when the kernel changes; binaries take more space on disk and more time to be transfered to nodes when started - having lots of shared libs require a way to manage LD_LIBRARY_PATH; something like modules or dotkit can help, but it needs to be kept synchronized with the installed libs; this is even more important when installing several versions of the same library side-by-side

--
Bogdan Costescu

IWR, University of Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany
Phone: +49 6221 54 8869/8240, Fax: +49 6221 54 8868/8850
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