Print

[Chon_Lee]

Awesome job, Very slick.  Now where did I put my other 10 xboxes?!?

[EvilWays]

What about clustering together clusters (nested cluster or supercluster)? This would combine clustering and distributed processing (SETI@home, Folding@home, etc.), though unless you had high available bandwidth on all entry points of the various clusters there'd be less than optimal results.

With a high number of Xboxes as nodes, it may be possible to set up a render farm though I may be wrong.

[antiflag1980]

Oh, I want to try this with gentoox and openmosix for speed, or it would be really simple to use dyne:bolic since it's already compiled with openmosix and it is a bootable live cd distro so nothing would be permanant.

[Potato Bob]

anyway you guys could hook me up with that power?
I would like to see what it can do

Hmm I wonder how vmware would do

[antiflag1980]

I would have used gentoox and compiled an openmosix kernel and distcc and then recompiled everything possible just about since you'd be using distcc over that many nodes with "-march=pentium3 -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -fforc-addr -falign-functions=4 -fprefetch-loop-arrays" and any other optimizations that would be good.  Then do some benchmarks! This cluster has made me want to start clustering xboxes, I just clustered two today, I recompiled the gentoox kernel with openmosix enabled and set up distcc on both, one is a normal xbox the other is a DreamX1400 I haven't compiled anything yet with openmosix on (supposedly causes build errors) but distcc is working beautifully.  I have a 154 port 10baseT switch, 8 port 10/100 switch and a 5 port 10/100 switch, all I need is more xboxes. Too much kernel compiling for one day though, shallax just fixed the kernel earlier today, so I've actually compiled the kernel/alsa/whatever else at least 4 times today.

[Arch~Angel]

Hello Everyone,

Sorry for the long awaited reply but we have been swamped with emails as well the cluster itself.  It seems when we compiled the kernel to add a few features there was a Linux version compatability problem.  The bottom line is the cluster is currently offline (DOA) until we can get these patches sorta out.    Dont get me wrong they are connected and power one and work great but only work as a single unit networked together.  somehow in the process we lost the OpenMosix portion of the kernel.  When we tried to recompile it to add the new features and put OpenMosix back on the kernel thats when it toasted the kernel.  We are working as fast as we can to get the kernel problem fixed and to locate what add on caused the problem.  Once we get a stable kernel again we will try and run the benchmarks, I know everyone is dying to see them as are we.

Stay turned as we will have this fixed and back on track soon....

Take Care,

Arch~Angel

[John Hoek]

Already fixed the problem?

[antiflag1980]

Ohhhh I love distcc/ccache. I've been compiling with a dreamX, two stock xboxes running gentoox, 2 gentoo pc's and 1 windows pc running colinux/gentoo alongside windows and it works great and things compile soooo fast.  I wanted to use openmosix sometimes, but I gave up, dynebolic has openmosix, but it doesn't seem to work right so I compiled openmosix enabled kernels on my gentoo pc and all 3 xboxes with gentoox installations, but for some reason the xboxes and pcs dont like each other, the xboxes work together in openmosixview and the pcs work together, but mixing won't work for some reason for me, so I just gave up.  A compiling farm is awesome for gentoo/gentoox users, but openmosix is just useless to me I guess, I don't know what the hell I would use it for anyway since openmosix doesn't actually distribute single processes they just migrate to different nodes so for normal computing you don't see any performance increase.  Distributed video encoding would be nice but I dont think that would be possible to be distributed either.  What do people use openmosix for anyway?  I can't find any practical use at all.

[skyman]

I just got a budget for about 48 but I am still on the 'learning curve' for how to mod these things.  At $150/box it's a decent deal but for $150 + Mod Chip + labor to mod each one you aproach about $200/box and then you can just go to walmart and buy a MUCH faster PC for $200.  Price/Peformance is not a major concern but then again I do not want to get rediculously overpriced/node.  I do not want to buy a mod chip and I would prefer not to solder or hotswap but can if need be.   I still need to figure out which hacks are more legal and which are illegal.  Again I'm still on the learning curve so no flames please.  Tomarrow I try the splinter cell Hack.  Wish me luck!

[pimpkid]

maybe slightly off-topic but:

is there a livecd with distcc already installed and enabled (like the knoppix cd for normal x86 machines)?

I'd like to use the xboxes that come in and out of my shop as node's on a small cluster project (10 or so xboxes at a time), but don't want to go through the process of installing linux on each xbox, as the end users I'm giving them to wouldn't want linux on there anyways.

If there's no livecd, possibly a way to install a very minimal build of linux that just has things like sshd and distcc ?

im excited to put the power of all these xboxes to work, what you guys have done so far is pretty awesome.

[noisebox]

I've been running gentoo on PC's for much longer than i've owned an xbox. I've since gotten MythTV Frontend to interface with my gentoo pc myth backend. I've designed and built a few other succesful linux projects, including a diskless workstations for the kitchen and screened porch., one of my favorites tho is my multimedia set-top box. When i started tinkering with the xbox and doing mods for cash on the side, i had decided to install gentoox on my xbox. A while back i was looking into clustering and came across the 2 mentioned projects "Mosix" and "OpenMosix"..
   Someone here had asked what the practical use for openmosix is. Imagine you're a business with 200pc's and a on clock staff of 100 people. (maximum employees in house at once). Each of those persons could use thier own machine, and 1 of the unused machines for procceses. Or perhaps your company does not want to invest in a full set of brand new desktop pcs. how about part together enough desktops for your employees, and then spend your budget on a nice linux server, something with great proccesing power. Perhaps each desktop is only a 1ghz machine, and your server is an SMP. the desktop users could migrate thier intense procceses to the server and releive the work load on the desktop for use on something else. I know this seems like a limited application, but real world there are uses.
   Now Mosix is what i'm interested in. At one point i had started to mess with mosix on a slackware 8 based machine. My eventual goal was to build a working base system as the "node master" or what have you.. and then strip it down to basics for use as a live cd (using the livelinux scripts from www.slax.org). It would be great to have a true Mosix livecd to boot each of the other 8 Windows machines in the house into the cluster. I had limited succes after compiling in Mosix support. For testing purposes i had 2 slackware machines installed. I managed to get both nodes operational, and even then it didn't feel like they were both pulling thier own weight. After reading this entry i'd be very interested in building a gentoo and gentoox live-cd with mosix prebuilt. the ability to live boot any machine in sight into my cluster would be amazing.  the one problem that comes along, after this is built i cannot distribute it legally. As Mosix can not be distributed in compiled format, tho you can get the code freely online. This is why openmosix was developed. Now perhaps i could distribute it to the scene like many of the other not-so-legal packages people have out there. But it being linux i'd feel guilty about distributing thru the usual places. Alright enough bable, good luck with your cluster and look for my Mosix cluster project here soon.

[Arch~Angel]

Hello Everyone,

WOW it has been a long time, and I want to appologize for the lack of communication.  I personally have had some major changes in my family with the delivery of a new son.  He had some problems at birth and was sent to a babies hospital, but hey the good news is he is doign much better now and our life is moving forward, but no one here wants to hear about my life you want cluster information...

Here are some updates...

The domain name issue has been solved as we have gone to XL-Cluster and I am currently trying to update all the information on the site and get this moving on the site again.

The cluster is still down but my partner BioRhythm has a working kernel and is tryign to compile a version which can be pushed out to all the nodes automatically.  This might take a few weeks as the Christmas season is upon us.  We are looking to run the first tests on this feature around the first or second week of the year.  If this all goes well we will begin the benchmarks again.  Lets all look forward to this feet and hope the features don't crash the newly patched kernel again.  Although it appears to be running stable now with a more recent kernel.

On another note, I have been in contact with skyman who has been given a grant or sponsorship to purchase 48 boxs and begin testing on this same concept.  Lets all support this step forward and give skyman support in this endeaver.  While speaking to skyman I can up with an idea which might bring a new light to this project....

Who would like to join the project?

Are you too far away to join the cluster with your box?

What If?

I do not honestly know if this will work or even if it is worth the chance, but heck it maybe fun....  What if, what if we setup a VPN connection to the cluster and run cluster updates, system tasks, and so on from our admin box, but from a VPN connection not a local connection?  What if, What if we build a world wide cluster joining nodes via VPN?  

Who is willing to join in this testing process once we get a tested and working kernel?

Keep in mind this may or may not work, it may crash the cluster, it maybe a complete waste of time, but heck it maybe a HUGE step forward in xbox linux clusters. ..

If you have any suggestions on this post a message here or drop me a PM...  Lets see what everyone thinks of this..

Whelp, I am behind on the web site so off I go to work on it...

Thanks for the support,

Arch~Angel

[Undisclosedpower]

http://www.xl-cluster.org/ is down

[Arch~Angel]

Sorry for the site being down...

Seems a trash truck ripped all the cable lines down within a three block radius of my home.  It should be back up and running once my updated DNS is fixed.  Try the site again and see if it works.  If not leave me a message and I will look into it futher...

Take Care,

Arch~Angel

[Cory3640]

hello every one an XBOX cluster sounds awsome i want to build one  i have 2 softmodded xboxes can you  build a cluster with softmodded xboxes? if so could some one tell how or is there a tutorial right now i am downloding Xebian i went to the download from xboxscene.com tanks for anyhelp