Would you donate your DSL system ...
Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: Would you donate your DSL system ...
started by: newby
Posted by newby on July 20 2006,12:25
Below is my vision. How many of you would be interested in donating processor cycles if we had such a system? Please reply. You also have my permission to copy my signature block into your signature block as a show of support.My vision is of a light weight Linux distribution with openMosix as an option. The user could then go to a website and click on a checkbox to chose a project to donate processor cycles to. Payment, if any, could go to a charity and/or to the opensource development team(s) for the distribution and tools used.
If I were a university administrator, for example, I would give a 3 inch CD to every incoming freshman. Confidential data would be restricted to the university's secure clusters. Research labs and students would have the option to use all the processing power of the whole university community.
(A side effect would be turning the Humanities Department computers into a super computer for the science departments. Science computers could also end up running textual analysis for the Religious Studies department as well! <laugh>)
(Every program put on the cluster would have to be vetted, otherwise the university would rapidly become one huge CD and DVD ripping engine ... and one bug could bring the whole mess to a grinding halt!) 8-O
Still SETI@Home, I'm sure, has addressed those same issues.
As a real-world example: My CPU usage as I'm typing here is running between 3 percent and 25 percent and my ram usage is running 12 percent. I'd love to be able to donate 50 percent to discovering a cure for AIDS or cancer or whatever.
Fearmongers may tell me that such a system would be used to do horrible things. Well, so has the fountain pen in the hands of a crook! Homeland Security isn't telling us to turn in our fountain pens -- yet.
Posted by kerry on July 21 2006,01:11
nothing wrong with a little vision, most good things start with a wish,then a bit of work and in the end success.
Posted by 300c_pilot on July 21 2006,04:19
I would support this cause, with unused cycles... Have a lot of computers around. 
Check out this post for clusters.
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;hl=pvm >
The original site for clusters:
< http://www.beowulf.org/ >
This is a link for building SoftType Clusters, DSL would be best for this type. You can use ssh to access all of your nodes and mpi or pvm to control them.
< http://fscked.org/writings/clusters/cluster-3.html#ss3.3 >
I have built a cluster with RedHat 9 and used it one time for a random number generator. 16 machines were quite fast for a 1024 diget random number. Never had a use afterwards.
Posted by newby on July 21 2006,11:10
Thanks for the moral support guys!My vision is of a system that would work out of the box for the ordinary user. Beowolf, though a great system, requires way too much programming and configuration support.
That's why I'm focused on openMosix which handles load balancing in the background. openMosix, however, works at the local Lan level. My vision is to hack it to work at the Internet level. This would require the openMosix kernal patch _and_ another patch as yet unwritten.
Since I am not a C hacker, I need to interest someone who is one. Two or three components seem to be what's needed as a minimum:
1. The kernel patch that does what the openMosix patch does, but across the Internet, through one's firewall/router;
2. A CGI script that accesses a database of information about projects, connects nodes to the projects they select and tracks the amount of time donated; and
3. A Firefox plugin to do anything needed on the node end, like maintain a database of previously selected projects, a database of servers and report the amount of time donated.
I'm working on finding a scripting language that I like. (Others could, and will, use other languages.)
However, I am _not_ a C hacker and need to find one enthusiastic enough to take this on. Once started, advice could be had from the openMosix community.
So, if you've written a few C programs and kernal hacking would be just the thing to stretch your abilities, hop on board.
P.S. to John & Roberts: Once working the patch(s) will be drop-in code that will require little more than an extra line in your make file. As best as I can tell, the kernel patch adds just a few hundred bytes and does not effect the functioning of the kernal unless the rest of the openMosix software is turned on. What I'm saying is, the kernal patch could be painlessly added to the base distro and the rest could be a *.dsl or a *tar.gz loaded by the user.
Posted by Del on July 23 2006,04:20
| Quote (newby @ July 20 2006,00:25) |
| (A side effect would be turning the Humanities Department computers into a super computer for the science departments. Science computers could also end up running textual analysis for the Religious Studies department as well! <laugh>) (Every program put on the cluster would have to be vetted, otherwise the university would rapidly become one huge CD and DVD ripping engine ... and one bug could bring the whole mess to a grinding halt!) 8-O Still SETI@Home, I'm sure, has addressed those same issues. |
Not a bad idea. I've run Seti@Home and Folding@Home in the past. Your idea sounds similar to Folding ( see < http://folding.stanford.edu/ > ) only more specific.
Seti and Folding are not big clustered supercomputing things though. The way they deal with what I quoted up there is each computer "donating" runs a program that processes a chunk of data. Then that result is re-uploaded to the project when finished. There's no interconnection between the users' computers like there is in a clustered network.
Posted by Caspar_s on July 24 2006,21:01
Sounds like < BOINC >There are quite a few projects to "donate" your cycles to.
There is a linux client, so making a .dsl shouldn't be too difficult...
Porbably a lot easier than getting an openmosix kernel to run in dsl.
Posted by Trog Dog on Aug. 05 2006,07:56
BOINC runs really well on DSL.I don't know that making a myDSL of BOINC would really be needed, as the standard install is very easy - just download and run the self installing package.
If you're interested in setting up a pc to run as a dedicated, remote BOINC cruncher I've written a < HOWTO >
Posted by Trog Dog on Aug. 06 2006,02:57
| Quote (newby @ July 20 2006,08:25) |
| My vision is of a light weight Linux distribution with openMosix as an option. The user could then go to a website and click on a checkbox to chose a project to donate processor cycles to. Payment, if any, could go to a charity and/or to the opensource development team(s) for the distribution and tools used. |
G'day Newby
You might find this thread of interest -< OpenMosix ClusterKnoppix >
Posted by Winter Knight on Aug. 08 2006,02:30
No, I would not be willing to donate my Linux system to cure cancer or AIDS.There are already several perfectly good cures for cancer, and the cure for AIDS is proper nutrition and to stop taking powerful deadly drugs, especially chain terminators.
When you support programs to "find a cure", you are actually funding the drug companies, who have financial motivation for, and a history of, hiding actual cures while they push their addictive drugs on suffering people who don't know any better. And most people don't know any better.
I might be willing to donate my extra CPU cycles if I found a worthy cause I believed in, but my trust in humanity is slim. The project results would have to be open to everybody.
Posted by newby on Aug. 08 2006,12:35
| Quote (Winter Knight @ Aug. 07 2006,22:30) |
| I might be willing to donate my extra CPU cycles if I found a worthy cause I believed in, but my trust in humanity is slim. The project results would have to be open to everybody. |
We're actually on the same page here. My intent is to create a system that:
1. Supports DSL, and
2. Allows research to be done at the less institutional level. Independent researchers, researchers from poor communities/countries, et cetera.
and then there's the classic LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP applications...
Regards,
newby
Posted by newby on Aug. 24 2006,11:47
I've been doing some research on adding super-computing to DSL.BOINC would be the easiest to integrate, but doesn't have the flexibility of openMosix.
openMosix is flexible, but doesn't have the security of BOINC.
One idea to make openMosix secure would be to integrate a cryptographic chain-of-trust into the oM kernel. Nothing that doesn't lead back to a trusted node would get loadbalanced to another node. Attempts to violate the chain-of-trust could be reported back up the chain. and handled accordingly. (Node removed from the cluster and sysadmin notified that they may be suffering a malware attack.)
Just think, you could build your own mini-itx cluster (like the cool looking Humidor Cluster by Jeffrey Stephenson < http://www.slipperyskip.com/page10.html > ) and donate a gigaflop to a good cause, while DSL or DSL-NOT would be getting publicity for running the head node.
You could also run your own applications, but they would not migrate beyond your own cluster because the chain-of-trust would stop at your firewall.
I could do any scripting in my favorite language, but would also need a C coder, since my brain doesn't do C.
Posted by twanj on Aug. 29 2006,18:17
Sorry, didn't see the other pages of discussion before posting.You should check out < BOINC > (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) and < Rosetta@home >
(Rosetta@home needs your help to determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that may ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human diseases. By running the Rosetta program on your computer while you don't need it you will help us speed up and extend our research in ways we couldn't possibly attempt without your help. You will also be helping our efforts at designing new proteins to fight diseases such as HIV, Malaria, Cancer, and Alzheimer's)
Sorry, didn't see the other pages of discussion before posting.
Posted by slipperyskip on Sep. 01 2006,21:59
| Quote (newby @ Aug. 24 2006,07:47) |
| Just think, you could build your own mini-itx cluster (like the cool looking Humidor Cluster by Jeffrey Stephenson < http://www.slipperyskip.com/page10.html > ) and donate a gigaflop to a good cause, while DSL or DSL-NOT would be getting publicity for running the head node. |
Thanks for the mention.
I've been looking for some software to run on my picoCluster's compact flash drives. Last I looked the Linux distibutions would not support CF drives....at least not very easily.
< picoCluster >