A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#1

Post by katzeilla » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster
rs-online.com

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#2

Post by rcarmo » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 6:25 AM UTC

This is great. I’ve had a single machine running for a long time, and a lot of the knowledge is still around, but buried in ancient pages. Having someone write about it and do a little hardware project is sure to spark interest.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#3

Post by m463 » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 6:26 AM UTC

The best kind of project. Well done - case, os, keyboard - but for no reason at all.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#4

Post by pandatigox » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 6:39 AM UTC

Does anyone have a link to that monitor? It looks uber cute!

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#5

Post by msk-lywenn » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 7:14 AM UTC

It would have been nice to know how the software side of the clustering was set up. How easy/painful was it to let the different pies know they were part of a single cluster, how easy/painful was it to have different programs seemlessly use resources from different pies, etc.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#6

Post by arghwhat » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 7:32 AM UTC

msk-lywenn wrote: post #5

It would have been nice to know how the software side of the clustering was set up. How easy/painful was it to let the different pies know they were part of a single cluster, how easy/painful was it to have different programs seemlessly use resources from different pies, etc.

On plan9, all your services are file based. The difference between a cluster and a standalone setup is just whether you mount local instances of a service, or remote instances.

For a cluster, you'll usually have a cwfs/hjfs (persistent storage) server, a faktotum (auth) server, and one or more CPU servers, and possibly a terminal machine.

You can then freely use or connect to CPU servers. As everything is shared, and the GUI is also file-based, everything will feel local.

https://9p.io/wiki/plan9/Expanding_your_Grid/index.html

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#7

Post by dusted » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 7:49 AM UTC

msk-lywenn wrote: post #5

It would have been nice to know how the software side of the clustering was set up. How easy/painful was it to let the different pies know they were part of a single cluster, how easy/painful was it to have different programs seemlessly use resources from different pies, etc.

I agree, I'd have liked to read about how he chose to set it up, there are 4 pi's in there, but for all I know, it could be that no more than a single one is actually doing anything.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#8

Post by aap_ » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 8:30 AM UTC

What did this have to do with plan 9? This post is mostly about building a cute case and keyboard for 4 raspis. No clustering and almost no plan 9 involved at all.

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#9

Post by flobosg » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 8:46 AM UTC

Devine Lu Linvega has been running Plan 9 on a Raspberry Pi for a while: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/plan9.html

Re: A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster

#10

Post by varispeed » Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 8:57 AM UTC

While this looks cool it is far from useful. I took time to build such cluster with the Pies and shortly after it landed in the box of things I may need in the future. It's just too slow to do anything useful. Watching stuff compile or even boot was like watching paint dry. It is much better to get a bunch of used NUC if you are space conscious or just get VMWare Workstation or similar tool to simulate number of machines on your desktop.