Thanks for the pointers, Jim! I had this fear that there wasn't something I was understanding with zeroconf addressing so it's good to know that other people have had similar ideas. :)
With BCCD, we have a huge variety of NICs that we've supported over the years, and even have had people run clusters over wifi (sometimes even intentionally) though obviously a shared medium is bad for performance and latency. On Wed, Feb 12, 2020 at 09:13:30PM +0000, Lux, Jim (US 337K) wrote: > I've used zeroconf quite effectively on a couple clusters of beagleboards. > If you do it, then you can let the nodes use DHCP to get their IP addresses, > which is handy if you're sharing a WiFi network, for instance. > > On the other hand, for a "training experience", having to go through the > process of manually assigning IP addresses, and node identifiers (hostname) > and keeping them all straight is a useful thing. Having done that, you > really appreciate zeroconf/bonjour and DHCP. > > My two configurations are: > Head node is a Macbook running OS X > Configuration 1: Macbook using Wireless to connect to the "internet" and > wired to connect to the cluster, which is 4 BeagleBoard Green with wired > ethernet. > Configuration 2: Macbook using wireless to connect to the "internet" and > wired to an 802.11b/g access point, then the cluster is 4 BeagleBoard Green > Wireless. > > In both cases, I wind up setting up a bridge from the cluster to the outside > world via the macbook, so that I can run things like "apt get" on the nodes > to install software. > I use a combination of screen, ssh, and pdsh to work with the nodes, and scp > (with pdsh) to move files around. > > Note that with beagles (and Rpis) you usually use a "network over USB" to get > it up originally (the gadget interface) > > On 2/11/20, 7:57 PM, "Beowulf on behalf of Skylar Thompson" > <beowulf-boun...@beowulf.org on behalf of skylar.thomp...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 06:25:24AM +0800, Benson Muite wrote: > > > > > > On Tue, Feb 11, 2020, at 9:31 AM, Skylar Thompson wrote: > > > On Sun, Feb 09, 2020 at 10:46:05PM -0800, Chris Samuel wrote: > > > > On 9/2/20 10:36 pm, Benson Muite wrote: > > > > > > > > > Take a look at the bootable cluster CD here: > > > > > http://www.littlefe.net/ > > > > > > > > From what I can see BCCD hasn't been updated for just over 5 years, > and the > > > > last email on their developer list was Feb 2018, so it's likely a > little out > > > > of date now. > > > > > > > > http://bccd.net/downloads > > > > > > > > http://bccd.net/pipermail/bccd-developers/ > > > > > > > > On the other hand their TRAC does list some ticket updates a few > months ago, > > > > so perhaps there are things going on but Skylar needs more hands? > > > > > > > > > https://cluster.earlham.edu/trac/bccd-ng/report/1?sort=created&asc=0&page=1 > > > > > > Wow, I had no idea people on the Beowulf list were still thinking of > BCCD. > > > :) > > > > > > I've been working on a major BCCD update for a while now (modern > Debian, > > > better node auto-detection) but a combination of life interference > and a > > > shift in focus for the project to curriculum development has slowed me > > > down. > > > > > > At the end of the day, BCCD has three has three main goals: > > > > > > 1. Non-destructive in its default mode > > > 2. Simple ("just press enter") > > > 3. Ready with pedagogically-useful ("validated, verified, and > accredited") > > > curriculum modules > > > > > > One thing I'm hoping can come out of this major update is to decouple > the BCCD > > > from the underlying distribution, since that's been a barrier for some > > > people in using BCCD. That's just an aspiration right now, but we'll > see > > > where it goes. > > > > Can you give more details on how you expect to decouple it? > > There's a couple things that are tightly integrated with the init process > now: > > * Network setup - prompts the user for information (which NIC to run on, > whether to use DHCP to assign addresses, etc.), detects other BCCD > systems on the network, etc. > > * SSH public key broadcast (pkbcast) - needs to run after a user logs in > to > ensure that authorized_keys is setup on other participating systems. > > The network setup in particular is a challenge in the systemd world, since > getting STDIN from systemd-invoked processes is not trivial. We've also > had > some users wanting better integration between networking and desktop > applications, which pushed me to try to make use of the existing > systemd/networkd toolchain rather than rolling our own tooling. > > Right now the challenge is the node auto-detection, though I'm hoping that > we might be able to use mDNS and zeroconf-assigned addressing rather than > depending on custom DHCP tags which have been problematic in the past. > zeroconf might also mitigate the biggest problem we have in workshops: > someone jumping the gun and starting up a head node before we're ready to > go. > > While I'm not the biggest fan of systemd, it does have the potential to > allow us to get away from custom scripts and use functionality common > across more than one distribution. > > -- > Skylar > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > > -- Skylar _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
