[ExeterLUG] December 13th details

[Paul Sutton]

On 20/11/13 11:23, Malcolm Dinsmore wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-11-18 at 15:58 +0100, Rick Timmis wrote:
>> I have updated the website with the details for the December meeting.
>>
>> Over to Malcolm for the Beowulf stuff.
>>
>
> Hi Rick et al...
>
> I'm working on getting a complete SD card image with a version of arch
> linux and the open source mpich software installed and some programs
> that we can run on it.  I've tested it with three nodes, I just need
> to put some finishing touches to this image which I hope to complete
> by the weekend so I can make it available well before the next meet
> (the SD card image will be about 180 mb tar.gz file and is 2GB
> expanded). 
>
> The requirements for the cluster are:
>
> Network Switches (we have 2 x 24 port I believe)
> A number of Trailing extension leads ( I can bring a 2 x 4 port)
>
> As many pies as we can muster!  Each Pi needs
>         a blank SD Card (at least 2Gb) loaded with cluster image  (I
> have enough for the three pies I can bring and 1 spare)
>         a network cable (I can provide at least 5 spares)
>         a UK micro usb power supply
>
> For the control Pi station I will bring an screen and keyboard though
> we could do that via SSH.
>
> It probably makes sense to put a name label on all the items that you
> bring. 
>
> Over on the DCGLUG mailing list there was a discussion about RPI
> clusters, apologies that I missed it at the time... I use a filter for
> the DCGLUG messages to keep them out of my inbox, because the
> discussion was tagged with the DCGLUG subject heading it got filtered
> and I missed it!
>
> Gordon is correct: I regard this as an academic exercise to learn
> about parallel computing.  We will probably need to have about 20 Pies
> to make a cluster with the same power as a PC.  It would be cool if we
> could get enough Pies together to beat my laptop.
>
> The Monte Carlo method of Pi calculation  lends itself to being done
> on a cluster since it involves repeatedly doing small independent
> actions that are aggregated and it's not important which order the
> actions are aggregated.
>
> With regard to Rick's suggestion of bit coin mining, I'm not sure that
> is practical on a Pi Cluster and probably not one that is so temporary
> as ours will be.  I'm assuming we can put the cluster together in an
> hour or so and run it for the rest of the evening then it will be
> dismantled.
>
> I hope to post more details early next week.
>
> Thanks for your interest,
>
> Malcolm
Hi

Excellent work here Malcolm,  I will try and collate some of this info
on the dcglug website (regarding what is needed etc) and we can provide
a link or maybe even host the image (if word press will let us do that).
Gordon is this possible,  ?  I think if saved as a tar.gz file it should
be fine to upload.

Rick - if there are some funds free could the lug buy some of the sd
cards,  I have sd card labels,  if we could then keep a set of ready
built cluster sd cards in our box,  then if we want to re-visit the
project at a later date we can do, as in say Jan Meeting or perhaps if
we wanted to use the project at a pi jam.




Paul