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SubjectRe: MOSIX and kernel mods.
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Richard Gooch <rgooch@atnf.csiro.au> writes:
> Going hopefully more on-topic, I don't think MOSIX matters anyhow. I'm
> not convinced of the merit of the idea in the first place. If you want
> "nice" clustering support, you're probably better off with DIPC
> anyway, keeping more of it in user space (but still not all).

There is a great book about clusters, which I recommend to anyone even
vaguely interested in the topic:

In Search of Clusters, Second Edition
Gregory F. Pfister
Prentice Hall PTR
ISBN: 0-13-899709-8

It's fairly long, and assumes very little of the reader, so many
readers of this list will find some parts very basic (e.g. explaining
what an SMP is), but it's a really good read. It covers both software
and hardware in equal measures. The 2nd ed. was revised in 1997, so
the hardware details are all reasonably current. (The first edition was
pre- commericial NUMA systems, but predicted them as inevitable).

In relation to this thread, it has a chapter on where you should put
the layer of software that makes the cluster look like a single
system. And the conclusion, unsurprisingly, is that it depends on what
aspects of a single system image are important to the application,
i.e. what you want to do with your cluster. The pros and cons of the
various approaches are described.

It also has lots of stuff on programming models for clusters,
including distributed virtual memory.

There's lots of things in there that it would be nice to see covered
by free software and Linux. Beowulf clusters are fine, but technical
computing is only one application of clusters, and other applications
require very different techniques. Recent events such as the MOSIX
episode, the announcement of a commercial clustered web-server on
Linux from Pacific HiTech, and hearing that Windows 2000 will extend
to 4-way shared-disk clustering have set me thinking about Linux and
clusters again; it would be a pity to see free software missing in
this area despite the successes of Linux.

Dave Wragg



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