what to do with clustered computers?

[bsd-roo 1]

hey guys,

anyone played around with the beowulf clusters? apparently it only takes five clicks in clusterknoppix.

the thing is, now that i know how to do it... what kind of fun things can i do with that much power???

any ideas?

mass video, mp3 compression? and thats where i got to, cant think of any more

maybe the novelty of owning a clusterd set of computers will wear off soon if i can't find a job for them

[prick 2]

Generating rainbowtables

[DrakeAnubis 1]

I ran a cluster for a while to do 3D Rendering and Animation, maybe you could play around with that for a while, there is a great site for video tutorials on 3D modeling (and other applications) www.3dbuzz.com. All of the outdated videos are free.

[riscphree 0]

I ran an openmosix cluster for a few days, but then I had no need for it really.

I tried password cracking, trying out distributed databases/applications. It was pretty cool at first but yeah, the novelty wore off pretty quick.

[mungewell 7]

Well if you normally heat your house with electricity you're no worse off (appart from the addition noise of all the fans)....

Mungewell.

[DrakeAnubis 1]

Well if you normally heat your house with electricity you're no worse off (appart from the addition noise of all the fans)....

Oh your not kidding man, I have a lot of computers that run all the time (asterisk, smoothwall, mythtv..etc) and for a while had them all in one room, it reached over 100 degrees just from all the computers.

... It was SO nice in the morning though, like 45 degrees outside, 80 inside (just from the computers).

[bsd-roo 1]

er, ok

so a beowulf heater???

3d graphics rendering sounds like i can give it a try.

can cluster knoppix install the tools required for the job? what tools will i need?

maybe blender? and also to do that will i need to install the operating system to hard disk?

thanks for all your ideas guys

much appreciated

[DrakeAnubis 1]

Anything that is really just repeative operations that are really heavy could be distributed, like if you had to brute force a hash or something (or if you need to convert a lot of video or audio files to another format). What about running something @home (like seti or folding).

If they are full machines I would use some of that hard drive space (that really wont be used if all the computers are just doing distributed work) for some redundant backups of like photos or files or something.

Edited March 15, 2007 by Drake Anubis

[bsd-roo 1]

ok guys

iv decided to look into a very very deep topic. Drake Anubis has caught my attention after i checked out that link.

my god the rendering looks awsome!!! check this out---> http://www.foofinu.com/Thriller1.mov

so i looked at some open source rendering softwares and i found this website ---> http://www.povray.org/

its seems abit too steep, might have to fork out understanding Maya and also learn how to use 3ds max.

might take a while but im gonna try and take this up because it looks so awsome!!!

anyone had experience on how to move files into cluster knoppix to render them?

oh and also, i don't know why i cannot register at that website.

it says "POST requests from foreign hosts are not allowed."

hmm any ideas?

thanks for all the input guys

[Seal 20]

ok guys

iv decided to look into a very very deep topic. Drake Anubis has caught my attention after i checked out that link.

my god the rendering looks awsome!!! check this out---> http://www.foofinu.com/Thriller1.mov

so i looked at some open source rendering softwares and i found this website ---> http://www.povray.org/

its seems abit too steep, might have to fork out understanding Maya and also learn how to use 3ds max.

might take a while but im gonna try and take this up because it looks so awsome!!!

anyone had experience on how to move files into cluster knoppix to render them?

oh and also, i don't know why i cannot register at that website.

it says "POST requests from foreign hosts are not allowed."

hmm any ideas?

thanks for all the input guys

I wouldn't waste my time with POV-Ray. A much better alternative is Blender:

http://www.blender.org/

Maya and 3DSMax are two entirely separate things.

The interfaces for the two, and how they approach 3D modeling is completely different.

3DSMax is really catered more for the ease-of-use experience, whereas Maya is oriented towards pure capability.

[DrakeAnubis 1]

3D Modeling kicks ass, once you spend like a couple days to get the program interface down, then you can just go as far into it as you want. Besides just being able to create really cool things you can use it practically too.

Like the other day I was working on a mount for an LCD screen (that used telescoping rods so the screen would stay out of the way until I extended it out) and I just took the measurements of the area and created basic shapes really quickly to figure out all the measurements for things that I would have to purchase. And then you can take a picture and align the model automatically so you will know what the finished project would like it.

The video tutorials on that site are fantastic (and go way in depth, of like hundreds of hours) the only down side is that the free versions are for a past version of the program but the program interface only changes slightly, you can get all the skill and terminology down from watching those.

I don't know why your getting that error though, just try it from another machine on a different network, it sounds like theres something that makes them think your machine is not legitimate. Also I don't know maya was well as 3D max but I do know that the 3D Max network rendering engine is fantastic, very fast, very efficient on network load, and it deploys without any problems.

[zal91 1]

Blender

http://www.blender.org/

Edit: Looks like someone beat me to it.

Edited March 16, 2007 by zal91

[Linux 1]

Try some genetic programming.

[DrakeAnubis 1]

Try some genetic programming.

That sounds interesting, can you expand upon that at all?

[bsd-roo 1]

blender looks cool, il give that a try.

genetic programming??? im all ears

btw thanks for all the ideas guys

[bsd-roo 1]

iv just tried installing blender, it installed fine but when i run it

i says that libHalf.so.4 is missing so i googled it and found rpm packages for fedora and debien users

im on slackware :help: and i have looked on the internet but can't seem to find it.

any ideas people?

thanks in advance

[livinded 9]

You could setup a one man @home project.

[DrakeAnubis 1]

You could setup a one man @home project.

Put them really close together in a small space, heater@home

[zal91 1]

This is kind of off-topic, but if I am cold when trying to get to bed, I put a video on to convert then set my MacBook beside my pillow.

[bsd-roo 1]

yea, it probably make a good heater but guys, i was hoping for more than that