Linux Cluster Technology

James D. Keeline <James@Keeline.com>
http://ITeachPHP.com/

The purpose of this class is to survey some of the techniques used to build high-performance and high-availability cluster computers with the Linux operating system.

Although there is no required textbook for this class, the following are some books which I have found to be helpful. The links below inclue my Amazon Associates ID. You can also find them at a discount at San Diego Technical Books which is located a few blocks from the school.

Linux Operating System

• Learning Red Hat Linux
  by Bill McCarty
  O'Reilly & Associates; ISBN: 0596000715; 2nd Bk & cdr edition (January 2002)
  A great introduction to the Linux operating system and the Red Hat distribution.


• Linux in a Nutshell
  by Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour, Stephen Figgins, Jessica P. Hekman
  O'Reilly & Associates; ISBN: 0596000251; 3rd edition (January 15, 2000)
  A good reference guide with lists of popular commands and options, alphabetically arranged.


• Linux Desk Reference
  by Scott Hawkins
  Prentice Hall PTR; ISBN: 0130619892; 2nd edition (August 22, 2001)
  A very good reference guide with popular commands and options, arranged in chapters by broad topics.

Linux Beowulf Clusters

• Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters
  by Charles Bookman
  New Riders; ISBN: 1578702747; (2003)
  A readable introduction to clusters which also happens to be one of the few books on the topic to include high-availablity, as well as high-performance, clusters.


• How to Build a Beowulf: A Guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters
  by Thomas L. Sterling; John Salmon; Donald J. Becker; Daniel F. Savarese
  MIT Press; ISBN: 026269218X; (1999)
  Another good introduction but the emphasis is on high-performance clusters.


• Building Linux Clusters
  by David H.M. Spector
  O'Reilly; ISBN: 1565926250; (2000)
  Another good introduction. My copy has some confusing typesetting problems with images and captions in the early chapters.

In addition to printed books, there are a number of useful references for Linux, Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Here are a few of the more important ones.

• Red Hat Linux (http://www.RedHat.com)
• Apache Project (http://www.Apache.org)
• Beowulf Project (http://www.beowulf.org)
• Building Linux Beowulf Clusters (http://fscked.org/writings/clusters/cluster.htm)
• Linux Clustering Information Center (http://www.lcic.org)
• Stone SouperComputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (http://stonesoup.esd.ornl.gov)
• OpenMosix Project (http://openmosix.sourceforge.net)


• Linux Cluster HOWTO
• Linux Parallel Processing HOWTO (http://aggregate.org/PPLINUX)
• openMosix HOWTO (http://howto.ipng.be/openMosix-HOWTO)
• Beowulf Tutorial: Building a Beowulf System


• PVM: Parallel Virtual Machine (http://www.netlib.org/pvm3/book/node1.html)
• MPI: Message Passing Interface Standard (http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/)

1. Registration
2. Take Class Survey
3. Assign user accounts
4. Describe how to log in from home via Secure Shell (SSH)
5. Overview of class
6. Basic Linux: navigating the file system and editing files for the web server