[K12OSN] Fun with MOSIX

["James Jensen" <jmsjnsn linuxfreemail com>]

Just a quick note for those interested in combining MOSIX with LTSP
3.0/K12LTSP.  I have successfully compiled a 2.4.17 kernel with the latest
MOSIX patches for the K12LTSP server and a LTS client kernel (again standard
2.4.17 w/ MOSIX patches).  My test server seems to work fine with it and the
clients boot up, no problem.  (BTW, I used make oldconfig and used the
kernel config files that came with the K12LTSP distro.  On the LTSP side
everything seems fine.)

I also installed the MOSIXView GUI
(http://freshmeat.net/projects/mosixview/) to monitor what's going on with
the cluster, which was very useful because it told me the clients were not
acting as part of the cluster!  Turns out, yes, the client Kernel is MOSIX
enabled but there is no script to tell it to start when the client boots.
For the heck of it I tried "service start mosix" but of course that didn't
work because again, no script on the client side...

The next phase my experiment will be to:

a) (Obviously) Include a MOSIX startup script for the clients.  The script
for the server was built automagically but I've got to figure out how and
where to put a similar script in \opt\ltsp\i386\etc\???? to get the clients
started after booting.  Any suggestions??

b) Determine which services to allow to migrate and which not.  The README
in the MOSIX kit contained some helpful instructions, but I need to verify
that other processes don't migrate if they shouldn't...

c) Finally, the real test.  What will happen when a client running a process
for another client fails (due to hard shutdown, etc.).  I have been told by
a reputable source that this shouldn't be a problem--I would still like to
see how gracefully it handles this scenario.

d) I would like to find a Webmin module for MOSIX, if there is one.  But
that's not critical...

FWIW, you can download MOSIXView for RH 7.2, SuSE 7.2, or the source tarball
at:
http://www.mosixview.com/downloaden.html

James Jensen
<><><><><><>
"Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess
ourselves.". -- JRR Tolkien