openMosix 2.4.34 kernel running under Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS

Hello, openmosix-general.

I've been running a linux-2.4.26-openmosix1 kernel with Red Hat 9.0, and 
Debian Sarge on our Beowulf cluster here for several years and it's been 
quite reliable. However, when the FedoraLegacy project announced the end 
of support for Red Hat 9.0 I started to think about an upgrade strategy.

My first step was to install Debian Sarge on one of the servers, which I 
did two years ago(!) and run the same linux-2.4.26-openmosix1 kernel. 
Since then, I've tested most of the software we use under Debian Sarge, 
and it all works fine. However, I quickly discovered that I couldn't 
recompile the openMosix kernel anymore when I upgraded to Debian Etch...

I now know the reasons why: I've applied the 2.4 kernel patches from the 
binutils-16 release, and modified the top-level Makefile to use gcc-3.3. 
During the course of this work, I looked at Ubuntu and, in particular, 
Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS as an alternative to Debian Etch. I'm using Ubuntu for 
another project and, I've found it to be quite a nice system to use.

I realise that the all openMosix developers are working hard on the 2.6 
openMosix kernel, but I wonder if anyone is still interested in the 2.4 
openMosix kernel?

To cut a long story short, I patched the vanilla 2.4.34 kernel sources 
from kernel.org using the openMosix-2.4.26-1.patch then corrected the 
failures manually and edited the binutils-16 changes into openMosix. I 
then compiled a linux-2.4.34-om1 kernel under Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS.

I've now got a two-node linux-2.4.34-om1 cluster running under Ubuntu 
6.06.1 LTS, which required some minor fiddling with /dev/MAKEDEV and 
/etc/modprobe.conf. Automatic process migration is working, but mosrun 
fails because of a problem with set_brk(). I'm debugging that now, but 
I'd appreciate help from anyone else who's interested in an updated 2.4 
kernel while the 2.6 kernel is being tested. I chose the 2.4.34 kernel 
because this is currently the 'stable' 2.4 kernel on kernel.org.

I'll create a 'deb' package of the kernel when I've got it working :-)

Happy New year!

	Tony.
-- 
Dr. A.J.Travis,                     |  mailto:[email protected]
Rowett Research Institute,          |    http://www.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt
Greenburn Road, Bucksburn,          |   phone:+44 (0)1224 712751
Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK.    |     fax:+44 (0)1224 716687

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