This document gives a brief description to Mosix, a software package
that turns a network of GNU/Linux computers into a computer cluster.
Along the way, some background to parallel processing is given, as
well as a brief introduction to programs that make special use of
Mosix's capabilities. The HOWTO expands on the documentation as it
provides more background information and discusses the quirks of
various distributions.
Kris Buytaert got involved in this piece of work when Scot Stevenson was
looking for somebody to take over the Job, this was during February 2002
The first new versions of this HOWTO are rewrites of the Mosix Howto
draft and the Suse Mosix HOWTO
("FEHLT", in case you are wondering, is German for "missing"). You will
notice that some of the headings are not as serious as they could be. Scot
had planned to write the HOWTO in a slightly lighter style, as the world
(and even the part of the world with a burping penguin as a mascot) is
full of technical literature that is deadly. Therefore some parts still
have these comments
Initially this was a draft version of a text intended to help Linux
users with SuSE distributions install the Mosix cluster computer package - in
other words, to turn networked computers running SuSE Linux into a
Mosix cluster. This HOWTO is written on the basis of a monkey-see,
monkey-do knowledge of Mosix, not with any deep insight into the
workings of the system.
The original text did not cover Mosix installations based on the
2.4.* kernel. Note that SuSE 7.1 does not ship with the vanilla
sources to that kernel series.