make a global gentoo supercomputer?

Goeland86

I just had this crazy idea thinking about SETI@home and other similar projects. I'm currently working on a rendering cluster here for various 3D creations I make (check them out here if you're interested).
Basically it was creating a program that would take advantage of every unused computer running gentoo across the web to compile, render or just number crunch various stuff. I'm thinking of something similar to DrQueue where there's one central node with some decent bandwidth (DSL might be enough for the task, although faster would mean better :wink:

and slaves that download temp files, number-crunch , send the output back and fetch a new one. That until the user of the computer logs on. Of course, if the screensaver kicks in the slave starts crunching again. I also want to restrict it to gentoo machines, at least at the beginning, just to show what Gentoo is capable of.

I don't know how feasible this would be, for someone with a SPARC compiling a program for a PPC arch, but it might be worth to try. Who knows, with as many users as we have, we might be able to create a "clustered super-computer" capable of making the news... it would most likely make the best use of all that energy that's used to just keep a computer up and running...kind of an environmental thought there...

Tell me what you think, I'm open to all comments.
By the way, I'll be headed to Portland, OR for college in the fall, so I might get more involved there as well.
_________________
The world could be destroyed by a nuclear war and there'll still be Keith Richards with 5 cockroaches: "You know I smoked your uncle right? F*$^ing craazy!" - Robin Williams

SabonSorte · n00b Joined: 28 Dec 2003 Posts: 10

There already exists something that can do the compiling part: distcc.

Of course, it's not perfect, and it doesn't kick in on screensavers or anything, but it's a start if you want to do a compiling cluster.

blatch · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 1:55 am Post subject:

I think this would be amazing if it was well-implemented and built into the distribution.
_________________
blatch.net

Goeland86 · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 1:57 am Post subject:

yeah, I know about distcc... the thing I don't really like all that much is the lack of GUI... it's so easy to manage a cluster with drqueue that it becomes ridiculous. Besides, it's so easy to have Drqueue running that all we would need to do would be to write the modules for gcc or new programs we'd want to use.
I think an emerge script is needed for drqueue, as it's pretty stable... but I dunno how to make them, although it's a good pretense to learn

_________________
The world could be destroyed by a nuclear war and there'll still be Keith Richards with 5 cockroaches: "You know I smoked your uncle right? F*$^ing craazy!" - Robin Williams

eean · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 1:59 am Post subject:

nmcsween · Guru Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 381

If your really interested in this why not fire off an email to the folding@home guys im sure they'll be willing to give you some source / tips.

eean · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 5:32 am Post subject: bandwidth

Oh, and something like distcc isn't feasible to be run on the internet, it has to be a LAN. You could try and design something that wasn't so bandwidth intensive, but that certainly wasn't a goal of distcc.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=145494
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?