Course Selection Week: "I don't do Windows, and neither does my Maid!"

Well, it's that time of year again! It's time for that yearly festival at my school. The week after midterms, students start to choose their courses for next year. My courses are largely elective, so I have to sell, sell, sell!

I'm not only selling the curriculum, but all the bells and whistles that goes with it including my PC Lab/Classroom/Linux Cluster, not to mention, myself! Contrary to popular opinion, I did not talk a lot about myself. I did introduce myself each period and give a little info about my background. The students also asked some questions about me. So, over the course of 9 periods, I divulged the following:

EDUCATION
1973 - Graduated Laurel Elementary
1975 - Graduated Longwood Middle School
1979 - Graduated Longwood High School (Sciences, Languages and Orchestra)
1983 - Graduated Cornell with BA Physics with EE minor
1989 - Graduated CW Post with MS Applied Mathematics and Computer Math

EMPLOYMENT
1982 - Joined Riverhead SHS Faculty as a Student Math Teacher
1983 - Joined Freeport SHS Faculty teaching Programming on Commodore Pet and Apple IIe
1984 - Joined Southampton SHS Faculty teaching Summer NYS Regents Math 11
1985 - Joined Baldwin SHS Faculty teaching NYS Regents Math and Science

1986 - Joined Syosset SHS Faculty teaching Summer NYS Regents Sequential Math III

1986 - Joined Ames Massapequa JHS Faculty teaching Math 7 and Honors Chem 8
1987 - ReJoined Baldwin SHS Faculty teaching NYS Regents Math and Science (to present)
1990 - Joined SUNY Farmingdale Faculty teaching Technical Calculus 1A and Discrete Math
1995 - Joined Nassau CC Faculty teaching Harvard preCalculus, Calculus I&II (to present)

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
1988 - Wrote Computer Math course (revised several times since - currently Discrete Math and SAGE)
1993 - Wrote Advanced Computer Math course (revised several times since - currently Discrete Math and python)
1999 - Wrote Computing Independent Study course (Linux Clusters)
2009 - Wrote Calculus Research Lab course (Calculus reenforcement using SAGE)

TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION
1986 - Designed first PC Lab (Room 429) in Baldwin and have redesigned several times since (hardware)
1987 - Installed first PC Lab (Room 429) in Baldwin and have reinstalled several times since (firmware)
1987 - Maintained first PC Lab (Room 429) in Baldwin and have done so ever since (software)
1988 - Introduced third website ever: CALCPAGE
1994 - Introduced Linux to Baldwin SHS
1997 - Introduced first ftp server to Baldwin SHS
1998 - Introduced first ssh server to Baldwin SHS
2005 - Introduced smart-boarding to Baldwin SHS
2006 - Introduced screen-casting to Baldwin SHS

TEACHING
1975 - Started teaching BASIC Programming!
1979 - Started teaching FORTRAN Programming!
1980 - Started teaching PL/I and PL/C Programming!
1984 - Started teaching AP CompSci/Pascal
1988 - Strated teaching Computer Math/BASIC
1993 - Started teaching Advanced Computer Math/C
1993 - Started teaching AP Calulus BC
1999 - Started teaching AP CompSci/C++
2005 - Started teaching AP CompSci/Java and html
2010 - Started teaching Calculus Research Lab (aka Scientific Computing Lab)/SAGE
2010 - Started teaching Computer Math/Discrete Math/python
2011 - Started teaching Advanced Computer Math/Discrete Math/python



I talked about Linux for a while. We talked about Linux mascots. I displayed the mascot for our Linux Cluster, Shadowfax. I played the KNOPPIX theme song and asked them to identify the chirping bird like sounds made by Tux. They eventually guessed it was a penguin! I showed them a picture of Tux. I had them fire up their Linux Boxes. Ubuntu booted up with its theme music. I showed them Maverick Meerkat. Then I played the clip from "The Big Bang Theory" where Dr. Sheldon Cooper is playing with his laptop saying how much he loves Ubuntu....

I got a sub for all my classes, gave then an assignment and bid them adieu (they went to the library). So my PC Lab was freed up. Every period through out the day, I selected one class to take on a "Field Trip" to our computer room. I told them what we do in all the courses they can take at their particular level. I talked about Scientific Computing. I let them play with SAGE. I basically did the first few days worth of Computer Math or Calculus Research Lab (selected from the following topics), depending on the audieance, in one period!



Day 0: Arithmetic in python, 2+7, 2-7, 2*7, 2/7, 2//7, 2%7, 2**7, repeating decimals with high precision such as 2/7.n(digits=1000000), very large integers like len(str(2**7777777), why is -12/5=-3 and -12%5=3?
Day 1: Algebra: factoring and 2D plotting
Day 2: 2D Geometry
Day 3: 3D Geometry
Day 4: Trig identities and equations
Day 5: Vectors: adding, subtracting, dilation, dot product
Day 6: Vectors: cross product, the triple scalar product
Day 7: Matrices: solving simultaneous equations, simple encryption
Day 8: Matrices: linear programming
Day 9: Programming: finding Mersenne Primes and solving Quadratic Equations
Day 10: Calculus: functions, derivatives and integrals

I visited primarily our Junior classes.
Regents preCalculus 4R-11 can take 5HAB aka AP Calculus AB, Calculus Research Lab and AP CompSci.
Honors preCalculus 4H can take 5HBC aka AP Calculus BC, Calculus Research Lab and AP CompSci.



Underclassmen can take Computer Math/Advanced Computer Math next year.  I nearly killed myself visiting all those Math classes last year.  So, this year I simple\y ran off flyers for the teachers of the Geometry Math 2H and Algebra II Trig Math 3H classes to hand out and discuss!

The usual sequence for computing is:
Algebra or Geometry or Trig
=> Computer Math Fall and Advanced Computer Math Spring (CM/ACM)
=> AP Computer Science (APCS)
=> Computing Independent Study (CIS(theta))

There is only one level of APCS now as the College Board cancelled APCS AB.  There is talk of a new introductory APCS course much like our CM/ACM coming soon.  Maybe we will be able to offer 4 levels of APCS one day:

APCS - Principles (new course)
APCS - Algorithms (current course - APCS A)
APCS - Data Structures (old course - APCS AB)
APCS - Clusters (current CIS(theta) course)

Calculus Research Lab (CRL) is open to AP Calculus AB and BC students as a lab every other day like a science class.  In CRL we use SAGE to do Calculus in the PC Lab in every class!

Oh, one more thing.  Did I mention that I'm getting a model 885xi extra wide SmartBoard???

Well, that's all folks, and I hope that gives you ideas for your Course Selection Week Field Trip Day!

Learning with Technology,

calcpage@aol.com
http://mathforum.org/kb/profile.jspa?userID=32552
http://shop.ebay.com/items/_ti_calculator_active

... then God made Midterm Week and saw that it was good!

Thank God for Midterm Week!  I finally get to do some major tweaking in the PC Lab! If you take a look at my previous posting, you'll see what issues I'm trying to address.

Student Stations:

So, what I am doing today is reinstalling all the Student Stations with the 32bit Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop Edition (maverick meerkat). As detailed below, I will be adding jre for firefox (3D graphs in jmol and screencast-o-matic) as well as SAGE to each of these fresh installs.

Teacher Stations:
The Teacher Stations will build upon the Student Station installation steps listed below. I will add to these stations WINE+VTI (on screen graphing calculator emulator - I might even add this to the student boxes for TI programming final project), xournal (pen app), VLC (video viewer), handbrake (video editor) and flash (youtube) for firefox.

Servers:
These boxes will build upon the Teacher Station installation as listed above. In addtion I will install vsftp, openssh, and jdk (apcs) from http://java.sun.com
Servers will retain the 32bit Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop Edition (upgraded from lucid lynx to maverick meercat).

DORM:
First there was RTFM (Read The Fraking Manual)!
Then there was KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)!!
Now, I just made up DORM (Download Once, Read Many)!!!
As I will be downloading a lot of the aforementioned apps for each station, I decided to download whatever I could to my USB memory stick to save time. This will be especially important for the servers as they don't have Internet access as of yet. So, I will download vsftp, openssh and jdk ahead of time from another station (its convenient that these are stand alone files without any dependencies). jre and flash are actually quick downloads, so I skipped storing those for now as I am focused on the student stations. As a result, I have the following folders on my USB stick.

UBUNTU_STUDENT:
-current jre *.bin from http://www.java.com
-current SAGE *.lzma from http://www.sagemath.org

UBUNTU_TEACHER:
-handbrake from synaptic package manager
-VLC from http://packages.ubuntu.com (50 dependencies!)
-WINE from synaptic  package manager
-VTI from http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/84/8442.html 
-xournal from http://xournal.sourceforge.net
-flash from adobe (auto-installs first time you try to youtube)

UBUNTU_SERVER:
-current jdk *.bin from http://java.sun.com
-current openssh *.deb from http://packages.ubuntu.com
-current vsftp *.deb from http://packages.ubuntu.com
-my modified vsftp.conf where I uncommented a few lines and added "anon_root=/home/ftp" at the end of the file which I stored at  http://pastebin.com

Step 1)

Boot Ubuntu CD, click install, answer on screen questions and run install. Make sure to make Student Stations boot without a passwd (unlike Teacher Stations and Servers). Also, make box name and userid the same so box name shows on top right of screen after boot up.
-students = alpha beta gamma delta, epsilon eta zeta theta
-students = iota kappa lambda mu, nu omicron iks pi 
-students = rho sigma tao upsilon, phi psi chi omega
-teacher = shadowfax
-server1 = guardian
-server2 = caprica

Step 2)

When asked to prepare partitions, do so as follows:

    /dev/sda1    fat32    42GB    (resize, but no other changes, leave wimpdoze partition alone)

    /dev/sda2    swap    256MB (change to swap)

    /dev/sda3    ext3     41GB    (change to ext3 + format + / partition)

Step 3)

-when the install process is done, reboot and remove the CD

-once the PC reboots and you get to the desktop, right click the vertical arrow icon on the top right and edit the Ethernet interfaces

    eth0 set to auto DHCP (proxy and passwd needed for internet)

    eth1: ip = 10.5.129.x (private linux lan)

            mask = 255.255.0.0

            gw = 10.5.0.254

            dns = 10.1.1.19

-test intranet connections with nautilus/ftp to 10.5.254.245
-internet connections will be tested later (via proxy and passwd) when downloading *.bin, *.lzma and *.deb files

Step 4)

-system/preferences/monitors set to highest resolution

-system/preferences/screensaver set to 2 hours

-right click desktop and select /change background to set your background and click visual effects for compiz

-system/administration/printers set network printer HP Laser Jet 4250 at 10.10.254.212

Step 5)

-install SAGE *.lzma by copying it to /usr/local as root. 
-extract SAGE *.lzma and rename dir as sage.

-add path "/usr/local/sage:" to /etc/environment
-make executable script startSAGE containing
    cd /usr/local/sage
    ./sage -n
-test script as user before rebooting to add admin passwd
-add startSAGE to system/preferences/startupapplications

Step 6)

Install jre1.6.0_23 as a Firefox plugin for 3D graphics in SAGE

-system/preferences/networkproxy (turn on proxy)
-use firefox to download latest jre *.bin file from http://www.java.com to /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

-open a terminal and 

    cd /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

    chmod 755 *.bin

    ./j*.bin

-then

    cd ~/.mozilla

    mkdir plugins

    cd plugins

    ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/jre1.6.0_23/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so

-test firefox with "about:plugins" as the url to see that jre was plugged in!

Step 7)

-disable games: sudo chmod 700 /usr/games/*

-careful when you do: sudo chmod 700 /home/* on the servers to secure saved files. We need to undo that for the ftp files: sudo chmod 755 /home/ftp or noone will be able to use anonymous ftp!

Step 8)

-install optional software like VLC, handbrake, xournal and games via aptitude+proxy or synaptic or http://packages.ubuntu.com

-on the servers, install openssh and vsftp via dpkg. 
-install the jdk in /usr/local and add the directory containing java, javac, javadoc and appletviewer to /etc/environment as per instructions from http://java.sun.com
-system/preferences/networkproxy (turn off proxy)

HTH, good luck with your Linux boxes!

Teaching with Technology, 

http://mathforum.org/kb/profile.jspa?userID=32552

http://shop.ebay.com/items/_ti_calculator_active

---

Problems, Problems, Everywhere....

Fall Semester 2010 is finally over at good old Baldwin High!  Its time for a little introspection and tweaking, shall we?

Computer Math

We tried a new curriculum here based on Gary and Maria Litvin's text "Mathematics for the Digital Age" which is really an introduction to Discrete Mathematics using python. I think my students did well with this new approach.

PROBLEM 1: We went a little slowly and only covered 5 chapters including MCQ tests and Labs. Well, actually, I'm starting with Lab 5 in Advanced Computer Math next week.
SOLUTION 1: Next year I think we can go a bit faster as we are more familiar with the curriculum now.

PROBLEM 2: We used http://www.sagemath.org which is based on python to do our classwork and labs. This worked well for a while, but recently we've been experiencing a lot of lag.
SOLUTION 2: This is Midterm Week. As such, I have a little time to experiment in my PC Classroom. I am looking into installing SAGE on every PC in class so everyone has their own private server and we have no lag! Ideally, I should set up a single private SAGE server for my students to login to, but I'm waiting on some new server hardware, so we'll revisit this issue then.

AP Computer Science

We are doing pretty well here. We covered 6 chapters of Cay Horstmann's Computing Concepts with Java 5th edition and 2 units of the Gridworld Case study.

PROBLEM 3: Our ftp/ssh server finally crashed. It ran literally 24x7 for 13 or more years if memory servers. It had Slackware Linux 3.0 installed for Pete's sake!
SOLUTION 3: I have to look into setting up a temporary server. I have a new Xeon 32bit dual-core but it has no internet access as of yet. So, I can install Linux using an Ubuntu Desktop Edition CD, but its hard to download server apps like openssh and vsftp.

PROBLEM 4: Whenever I want to show a youtube, I have to switch over to Windows since my 64bit Ubuntu installation cannot run flash.
SOLUTION 4: Since I'm installing SAGE on all my Linux boxes, I thought a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop edition would be in order. So, while I'm at it, I think I'll downgrade to 32bit. Flash and Wine, just to mention a few utilities, are easier to install and maintain in 32bit. I've been running 64bit OSs for about a year now and found little benefit in everyday usage. I have a 64bit OS for the cluster, that's all we really need on our 64bit Athlon dual-cores. My Teacher Station should then be able to run flash in Linux. I wonder if my Airliner Slate will work better in 32bit. It is way to sensitive in 64bit!

preCalculus

We have no problems here as we are on track to have a month and a half or so at the end of the year to do some real Calculus. That was the plan all along in 4R-11. This is a custom course for Juniors who want to take AP Calculus AB next year. So, we cover a traditional preCalculus class a little bit on the fast side. I am looking to replace my Airliner Slate, however, with a full-fledged TouchScreen Laptop to integrate the slate and the mic into one device. I will also be able to control the Teacher Station via RDP rather than BlueTooth as the Slate does or via several wires (audio, video, Ethernet) as my current Laptop does.

AP Calculus BC

We are good to go here as well. I'm just wondering what I'm going to do with a new SmartBoard! You heard what I said, I will still use my Airliner Slate, but I'm scheduled for a SmartBoard installation soon to replace my current PC Projector/Screen and speakers. I'm pushing for the extra wide xi model (74 inches wide, 46 inches tall) as a standard SmartBoard has only about 61 inches of writing space. My students are used to a much wider screen when I do my fake SmartBoarding and Screen-casting.

Learning with Technology,

calcpage@aol.com
http://mathforum.org/kb/profile.jspa?userID=32552
http://shop.ebay.com/items/_ti_calculator_active

Man, Moment and Machine on HISI

Just a quick note about a new show I caught by accident last week on the History International cable channel.  IDK if this is really a new show, but its new for me!  HISI is certainly new on my Optimum Cable provider.  I think its channel 168?

Anyway, this episode was about the life of Galileo and his troubles with the inquisition.  One of the narrators was Dava Sobel who had written a very interesting biography a couple of years ago.  The general theme was the age old battle between Science and Religion.  People tend to make this generalization all the time, I don't think this theme is really valid, however.  Many scientists in history were very devout in their own right.  In fact, as a scientist myself, I was drawn to science because of my religion, not in spite of it!  How better to understand the works of God?

There's a similar feud between Creationism and Evolution.  Again, I don't see the problem.  I don't take the Book of Genesis in the Bible verbatim.   I think of Genesis as a metaphor.  For example, when it states that God made the Heavens and the Earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th, who's to say how long a day is?  Maybe a day is really a millennium (1000 years).  This definition of day would actually make the Creationists, who do take the Bible literally, very happy as they think that the Earth and everything on it was created less than 5000 years ago.  However, who's to say a day isn't longer still, say an eon (1000000 years) which is closer to what the Evolutionists think?

I think we have to get away from making all these generalizations.  For example, my least favorite generalization is "Math is too tough and I'll never need to know this stuff anyway!"

 Generally Speaking,

CIS(theta) Meeting IX (2010-2011) - try, try, try, try, try, try, ...., again!!!

Aim: 

pelican HPC 2.2 64bit: If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try, ...., again!!!

Attending: 

CIS(theta) 2010-2011: DavidG, HerbertK, JoshG, RyanH

Reading: 

pelican HPC CD 64bit version 2.2: /home/usr/*

pelican HPC CD 64bit version 2.2: /usr/bin/pelican*

Research: 
http://bccd.net
http://bccd.net/ver3
http://bccd.net/pipermail/bccd-developers
http://www.dirigibleflightcraft.com/index.html
http://www.dirigibleflightcraft.com/CbN/index.html
http://www.pelicanhpc.org

http://pelicanhpc.788819.n4.nabble.com/pelicanHPC-ReMaster-td3163841.html

It's been a while since I blogged, but that's just because we've been busy trying out several Linux liveCD distributions for setting up High Performance Clusters!  As you will see in the nabble link above, we have a thread on the http://www.pelicanhpc.org forum regarding our efforts in getting pelicanHPC working on our LAN even though we have tons of DHCP conflicts.  We also tried out Cluster By Night which does not suffer from the DHCP problem as it sets up public key authenticated ssh to connect nodes which works right out of the box!  I'm also revisiting BCCD as detailed below.

BCCD Update

I just recently revisited the Bootable Cluster CD project sponsored by the University of Northern Iowa.  Years ago, when Paul Gray started the project, he was very helpful to my students in setting up an openMOSIX cluster using BCCD.  This was back in the day when clusterKNOPPIX and QUANTIAN were the only other competitors.  Now, Paul is not so intimately involved with the project.  Take a look at the BCCD links listed above.  You will see the main site, the site for version 3.0 and the developers' forum to which I have contributed a little in December and January.  So, now it seems there's a team of developers involved from the littleFe project to Earlham and Contra Costa Colleges.

Last week I downloaded their latest ISO (3.0 for 64bit).  The problem with this distro is that its slightly too big for a CD, so I had to burn a DVD.  Another issue is that when BCCD boots, it copies itself to RAM.  An ISO file has some compression associated with it, so the 800MB ISO expands to over 1GB in RAM.  I cannot use this ISO as my worker nodes, 64bit Athlon dual-cores, only have 750MB RAM.  Next step will be to try the 32bit ISO which is smaller.  In fact, I did try the 32bit version on my Xeon dual-cores and the system seems to boot all the way but then fails just when the X windowed desktop should appear.  I'll try to boot with the linux 4 cheat code next time.

Cluster by Night Screencast from Dept. Dirigible Flightcraft on Vimeo.
Cluster By Night Update

Cluster By Night is proving to be very interesting.  Kevin Lynagh created 2 ISOs for 32bit arch.  One boots the Master and then each Worker node uses a separate ISO.  So, we burned 1 master and 7 workers to test out CbN.  Each ISO is only about 15MB so its a fast download, burn and boot!  You get a  full openMPI installation and you can boot up the cluster using public key authenticated ssh in a mater of minutes.  There are sample apps on CbN but not much source code or dox.  So, we booted up a 32bit pelicanHPC 2.2 CD and compiled flops.f using mpif77 -o flops flops.f since doing so in CbN causes errors.  It would seem that the openMPI installation on CbN is incomplete.  At least gfortran is missing.  Then I copied the executable program flops to the CbN master node from sftp user@10.10.129.21 as pelicanHPC which was running on worker node #21.  Then we ran cbn_run -np 16 flops from the master and got 8 nodes, 16 cores running at nearly 7GFLOPS!  Again, openMPI is incomplete as using mpi_run causes a ton of errors too!  All in all, CbN is very promising. 

Pelican Update

We are focusing this week's readings on the files on a booted pelicanHPC 2.2 64bit CD.  We printed out all the files in /home/user (including pelican_config) and all the files starting /usr/bin/pelican* (system scripts for starting the cluster).  Michael Creel says we should be able to modify how pelicanHPC boots by editing pelican_config and putting it in a persistent home volume called PELHOME.  In this manner, we hope to disable pelican's DHCP server so as to use the existing DHCP service on eth0 already.  Once we eliminate the DHCP conflicts, we should be able to boot the worker nodes from the one master CD via PXE after all.  Wish us luck!

Well, that's all for this week!  Please stay tuned.  We hope this record will help others trying to make their own clusters.  Also, if you have any hints or pointers, please leave a comment to let us know.  

Happy Clustering,

calcpage@aol.com

http://shop.ebay.com/items/_ti_calculator_active

http://mathforum.org/kb/profile.jspa?userID=32552

CIS(theta) Meeting IX (2010-2011) - try, try, try, try, try, try, ...., again!!!

Aim: 

pelican HPC 2.2 64bit: If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try, ...., again!!!

Attending: 

CIS(theta) 2010-2011: DavidG, HerbertK, JoshG, RyanH

Reading: 

pelican HPC CD 64bit version 2.2: /home/usr/*

pelican HPC CD 64bit version 2.2: /usr/bin/pelican*

Research: 
http://bccd.net
http://bccd.net/ver3
http://bccd.net/pipermail/bccd-developers
http://www.dirigibleflightcraft.com/index.html
http://www.dirigibleflightcraft.com/CbN/index.html
http://www.pelicanhpc.org

http://pelicanhpc.788819.n4.nabble.com/pelicanHPC-ReMaster-td3163841.html

It's been a while since I blogged, but that's just because we've been busy trying out several Linux liveCD distributions for setting up High Performance Clusters!  As you will see in the nabble link above, we have a thread on the http://www.pelicanhpc.org forum regarding our efforts in getting pelicanHPC working on our LAN even though we have tons of DHCP conflicts.  We also tried out Cluster By Night which does not suffer from the DHCP problem as it sets up public key authenticated ssh to connect nodes which works right out of the box!  I'm also revisiting BCCD as detailed below.

BCCD Update

I just recently revisited the Bootable Cluster CD project sponsored by the University of Northern Iowa.  Years ago, when Paul Gray started the project, he was very helpful to my students in setting up an openMOSIX cluster using BCCD.  This was back in the day when clusterKNOPPIX and QUANTIAN were the only other competitors.  Now, Paul is not so intimately involved with the project.  Take a look at the BCCD links listed above.  You will see the main site, the site for version 3.0 and the developers' forum to which I have contributed a little in December and January.  So, now it seems there's a team of developers involved from the littleFe project to Earlham and Contra Costa Colleges.

Last week I downloaded their latest ISO (3.0 for 64bit).  The problem with this distro is that its slightly too big for a CD, so I had to burn a DVD.  Another issue is that when BCCD boots, it copies itself to RAM.  An ISO file has some compression associated with it, so the 800MB ISO expands to over 1GB in RAM.  I cannot use this ISO as my worker nodes, 64bit Athlon dual-cores, only have 750MB RAM.  Next step will be to try the 32bit ISO which is smaller.  In fact, I did try the 32bit version on my Xeon dual-cores and the system seems to boot all the way but then fails just when the X windowed desktop should appear.  I'll try to boot with the linux 4 cheat code next time.

Cluster by Night Screencast from Dept. Dirigible Flightcraft on Vimeo.
Cluster By Night Update

Cluster By Night is proving to be very interesting.  Kevin Lynagh created 2 ISOs for 32bit arch.  One boots the Master and then each Worker node uses a separate ISO.  So, we burned 1 master and 7 workers to test out CbN.  Each ISO is only about 15MB so its a fast download, burn and boot!  You get a  full openMPI installation and you can boot up the cluster using public key authenticated ssh in a mater of minutes.  There are sample apps on CbN but not much source code or dox.  So, we booted up a 32bit pelicanHPC 2.2 CD and compiled flops.f using mpif77 -o flops flops.f since doing so in CbN causes errors.  It would seem that the openMPI installation on CbN is incomplete.  At least gfortran is missing.  Then I copied the executable program flops to the CbN master node from sftp user@10.10.129.21 as pelicanHPC which was running on worker node #21.  Then we ran cbn_run -np 16 flops from the master and got 8 nodes, 16 cores running at nearly 7GFLOPS!  Again, openMPI is incomplete as using mpi_run causes a ton of errors too!  All in all, CbN is very promising. 

Pelican Update

We are focusing this week's readings on the files on a booted pelicanHPC 2.2 64bit CD.  We printed out all the files in /home/user (including pelican_config) and all the files starting /usr/bin/pelican* (system scripts for starting the cluster).  Michael Creel says we should be able to modify how pelicanHPC boots by editing pelican_config and putting it in a persistent home volume called PELHOME.  In this manner, we hope to disable pelican's DHCP server so as to use the existing DHCP service on eth0 already.  Once we eliminate the DHCP conflicts, we should be able to boot the worker nodes from the one master CD via PXE after all.  Wish us luck!

Well, that's all for this week!  Please stay tuned.  We hope this record will help others trying to make their own clusters.  Also, if you have any hints or pointers, please leave a comment to let us know.  

Happy Clustering,

calcpage@aol.com

http://shop.ebay.com/items/_ti_calculator_active

http://mathforum.org/kb/profile.jspa?userID=32552

CIS(theta) Meetings VII & VIII (2010-2011) - pelican HPC Trouble Shoot!

Aim: 

pelican HPC Trouble Shoot!

Attending: 

CIS(theta) 2010-2011: DavidG, HerbertK, JoshG, RyanH

Visiting:

CIS(theta) 2009-2010: SteveB

CIS(theta) 2008-2009: MarcA

CIS(theta) 2007-2008: ChrisR, FrankK

In Spirit:

CIS(theta) 2010-2011: JayW

CIS(theta) 2009-2010: ArthurD, DevinB, JeremyA

CIS(theta) 2008-2009: MitchelW

CIS(theta) 2007-2008: NathanielR

Reading: 

Nope, just trouble shooting...

Research: 

http://idea.uab.es/mcreel/PelicanHPC/

http://pelicanhpc.788819.n4.nabble.com/

http://packages.debian.org/sid/all/live-helper/download

http://pareto.uab.es/mcreel/PelicanHPC/Tutorial/PelicanTutorial.html

http://www.linux-magazine.com/w3/issue/103/030-035_pelicanHPC.pdf

http://www.bachelorsdegree.org/2010/12/08/20-incredible-ted-talks-for-math-geeks/

As you can see, we had a full house today! Wow, thanx guys for the great turnout right before the holidays and all the trouble shooting you did! BTW, this meeting took the place of both meetings for this month as I had to cancel two weeks ago.

Anyway, we tried booting a single node of the cluster from a student station (AMD Athlon 64bit dual-core) using a pelicanHPC 64bit 2.1 CD.  We ran the pelican_setup script and compiled flops.f

mpif77 -o flops flops.f

and ran it stressing only one core to see how many MFLOPS we could get

mpirun -np 1 --hostfile tmp/bhosts flops

and we got nearly 400 MFLOPS. Then we tried 2 cores and got a bit over 750 MFLOPS. Try as we might, we could not get two or more nodes of this type to boot up via PXEboot using the school Linux network. Then we tried a cross-over Ethernet cable and got 4 cores running flops up over 1500 MFLOPS! We tried the same thing with the 2 new Intel Xeon 32bit dual-core servers we just inherited. The difference here was we used a pelicanHPC 32bit 2.2 CD which compiles and runs flops automatically for a single node. Also, we got PXEboot to work over the school Linux network and got 4 cores running over 2200 MFLOPS!

We also tried hooking up some laptops to a private router via pelicanHPC 2.2 and mixed in some of the student stations. This worked well since it was off the school network. At one point we had 4 nodes running 8 cores at about 3400 MFLOPS. Thanx for bringing in your own laptops, routers and cables! Maybe we should get our own gigabit switches?

OK, so that's progress! I think we are sick of playing with the school network: public vs private, eth0 vs eth1, starting a DHCP server or not. So, the consensus now is to roll our own version of pelicanHPC (see research links above - last link is not HPC retated and is there just for fun). We'll remaster pelicanHPC without its own DHCP server to make use of the existing DHCP server on the public Windows network on eth0 since pelicanHPC seems to work best on eth0. Not to worry, pelicanHPC is based on debianLive which is supposed to be easy to remaster.

Let us proclaim it through out the land, our remaster shall be named shadowfaxHPC! OOPs, sorry to get all LOTRy there. Where's Gandalf when you need him?

Have a great Winter Break and Happy Holidays!

Rest up, you're going to need it....

Happy Clustering,

calcpage@aol.com

http://shop.ebay.com/items/_ti_calculator_active

http://mathforum.org/kb/profile.jspa?userID=32552