Statphys PC-Cluster

Statphys PC-cluster consists of one master node, one network file server (NFS) and several client nodes. Basically, this cluster belongs to the category of Beowulf cluster. It provides a distributed computational environment for computational physics and other related fields. Users can submit jobs to each client nodes separately or use parallel programming languages, such as Parallel Message Passing (MPI) and Parallel Virtul Machine (PVM), to carry out simulation tasks.

For system performance consideration, statphys cluster provides services for computation only and shotdown unnecessary daemon for other services which are not related with computation.

Any suggestion and comment are welcome.

Contents

System Overview

Hardware Configuration

The hardware components of Statphys PC-cluster is listed below
  1. One Master node which is acted as the cluster's console and gateway.
  2. 5-9 client nodes which are the major plateform for computation.
  3. One NFS for the storage and backup of all user's data.
  4. One 16-ports switch hub which is used to connect all node together.
  5. One 16-ports hub which is used to connect all node to file server.

The hardware configuration is shown in the figure 1.

Each node of this cluster has two CPUs. The hardware specification which includes CPU type, cache memory, main memory is listed below

Statphys Pc-cluster
node CPU type CPU MHz No. of CPU CacheRAM
pc1 Pentium II400 2 512 K 512M
pc2 Pentium II400 2 512 K 512M
pc3 Pentium II400 2 512 K 512M
pc4 Pentium II400 2 512 K 512M
pc5 Pentium II333 2 512 K 384M
pc6 Pentium II333 2 512 K 320M
pc7 Pentium II333 2 512 K 128M
Contents

Software Configuration

The operating system (OS) of this cluster is Linux RedHat 6.2. For master node (pc1) and NFS server, the installations are complete. That means every packages in RedHat 6.2 distribution are installed. For other client nodes, the installations have been minimized only base and a few necessary packages been installed. The master node provide a gateway to Internet and the NFS node provides file server and network information service (NIS) for the whole cluster. For parallel computation, MPI is installed in pc1. The whole cluster has been configured into two subnet. The network addresses for NFS is 192.168.0.0 and for communication of computations is 192.168.1.0. Each node has two hostname and two IP address except the master node(pc1) which has three hostnames and three IP addresses. The IP address of each node is given in the following table.

IP address of the nodes in Statphys Pc-cluster
Hostname:IP Address (eth0) (eth1) (eth2)
pcNFS1:192.168.0.1pc1:192.168.1.1statphys:140.109.102.192
pcNFS2:192.168.0.2pc2:192.168.1.2no
pcNFS3:192.168.0.3pc3:192.168.1.3no
pcNFS4:192.168.0.4pc4:192.168.1.4no
pcNFS5:192.168.0.5pc5:192.168.1.5no
pcNFS6:192.168.0.6pc6:192.168.1.6no
pcNFS7:192.168.0.7pc7:192.168.1.7no
Contents

User's Guide

How to Login

The master node (pc1) is the only one which can be accessed from the Internet. User can login Statphys PC-cluster from your local machine by typing

telnet statphys.phys.sinica.edu.tw

or

telnet 140.109.102.192

After login pc1, you can go to other nodes , for example pc2, by typing

rsh pc2

or

rlogin pc2

If your local machine does not belong to the network address 140.109.102.1-244 or 140.109.103.1-244, you have to ask the system administrator to add the IP address of your local machine in hosts.allow list such that you can access Statphys PC-cluster from outside of Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica. Contents

How to Submit Jobs

The simplest way to submit a job to a node, for example pc2, is by the following procedure

rsh pc2 /* remote login to pc2 */

cd To_the_Directory_You_Want /* change to the directory you want */

Your_Executable_Progam /* execute your program */

If your are familiar with shell script or PVM, you can write your own script or PVM program to carry out your computation automatically. Contents

Some Useful Commands

  1. yppasswd: change your password.
  2. uptime: take a look at the current loading.
Contents

Security Policy

 Actually, the current security measure is not strict. Security is a big issue in the Internet and the system administrators do not have enough time to implement all security measure to Statphys PC-cluster. System administrators will continue to enhance the cluster security as long as their free time is found. Contents