[Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

[Prentice Bisbal]

Bogdan Costescu wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Sep 2008, Jon Forrest wrote:

> This also depends on how much of the distribution you keep as part of
> the node "image" and how you place the application software. It's often
> the case that the application software is distributed to the nodes from
> a cluster-wide FS, either from a directory holding software only or from
> the user's home dir; extending this to also include most of the
> libraries needed by the application software (f.e. fftw) means that the
> node "image" can be made very small without putting any part of the
> distribution on NFS (I know that some people totally dislike system
> utilities coming from a NFS mounted directory or depending on libs
> coming from one).

This brings up something else I was wondering about: If you truly strip
down the OS running the nodes so that its just a tiny kernel and only
the essential libraries, the users would have to compile all their
software (assuming they compile their own code, like they do here)
statically linked.

Is anyone here using an arrangement like that? Is that too impractical?

-- 
Prentice