[Tfug] recommendations for installing a cluster..

[Jeremy D Rogers]

[snip]
>> Just curious - are there advantages of Ubuntu Server over vanilla
>> Debian beyond the predictable release/support cycle?

Actually, for me it has nothing to do with release cycle.
I'm doing things backwards. I have vanilla debian sid on my laptop,
but have been using ubuntu on the workstations in the lab. The only
reason is that I'm the only one who know linux well and I'm teaching a
bunch of others and thought ubuntu would be more endearing. Once I had
it on the workstations, I thought it would just be convenient to make
thing more uniform and use it on the cluster as well. So far though,
the server version of ubuntu is stripped enough, that I doubt it would
make much difference at all. Oh, and also when I'm gone from the lab
(or too busy to deal with issues doing my own research) there is a guy
who sounds pretty good that we can use on an hourly basis to help and
I was happy to find out he prefers ubuntu. Again, just another reason
to keep things more uniform to make it easier.

> I don't _think_ so (didn't see if vanilla Debian has GFS tools), but
> that's a big one for us.

I believe it does. I spent some time looking at cluster tools between
the two and they are pretty similar. I want to avoid too many
non-native packages, but I think they are pretty similar for all the
things I wanted (mostly openMPI). They both have gridengine and slurm
packages but I think ubuntu might be a step ahead when it comes to
torque.

JDR