OpenSSI installation

Hi to all,

I am new to this list and to linux clustering,so please excuse newbie
mistakes. ;)

Okay following, I am working on my bachelor's thesis the follower to the
diploma thesis in my study course.
This work has to do with setting up a linux cluster for our students at
the University of Applied Sciences at Ulm. The students need a
environment just to connect to with NXClient or X over ssh-forwarding.
Our current server is just too slow, so we try to build up a transparent
solution which can take the whole load. Just an example, if more tan 10
students start openoffice on the current server, it reacts slow like a
turtle.
Okay now you know the goal.
We are discussing two possibilities: just one loadbalance before the
serverfarm with more similar servers like the current, or a real cluster
with openssi with these servers.

So we're trying the better solution: a cluster with openssi.

There we are now, and I'm stuck in the installation.
First the environment I'm experimenting with:
4x AMD Athlon XP 1800 with 1GB RAM or 768 MB
rootnode has got 1GB RAM
All machines support PXE Boot so I'll use that.
I've installed debian with standard options just changed the
language-settings to German.

At my first try I followed this instructions
http://openssi.org/cgi-bin/view?page=docs2/1.9/debian/INSTALL.html

With a little hint from this wiki:
http://www.informatik.hs-furtwangen.de/wiki/index.php/Openssi#Installation_OpenSSI_Cluster
I am sorry that this is in German, but the main hint was to download the
last sarge distribution 31r6a for installation repositories.

Everything runs fine till the reboot of my machine to start with the
openssi patched kernel 2.6.10-ssi-smp, that one installed automatically.
Booting this kernel leads into a kernelpanic with following messages:
after detecting any RAID arrays, there are none ;)

RAMDISK: cramfs filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 4292KiB [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on
unknown-block(1,0)
Instruction(i) breakpoint #0 at 0xc01272e0 (adjusted)
0xc01272e0 panic_hook:		int3

followed by the kerneldebugger-console kdb

Okay, I have no clue what the hell is the problem here, google was no
great help. So I decided to try out, building the kernel by myself.
I followed this instructions to install the latest cvs-version:
http://openssi.org/cgi-bin/view?page=docs2/1.9/debian/devel/INSTALL.cvs

No problem occurs until step 4 "Build ci and openssi tools" after
executing the comand
/usr/src/ci# ./scripts/build-debian ci ../package/

Logmessages:
Building ci....
dpkg-checkbuilddeps: Unmet build dependencies: debhelper (>>3.0.0)
Unmet dependency for cluster-tools

Trying to install debhelper led me into dependency hell because
debhelper depends on file >= 3.23-1 but that won't be installed by
apt-get because of the openssi distribution I think.
Trying to install file runs into following dependencies:
file depends on libmagic1 (=4.17-5etch1) but don't have to be installed
" depends on libc6 (>= 2.3.6-6) but 2.3.2.ds1-22sarge6 has to be installed
" depends on libmagic1 but don't have to be installed


Okay, now there goes the hope that anyone can help me to solve this
little hell, because my little cluster should be up and running
rudimentary within this week due to my schedule.


Greetings from Ulm/Germany,
	Marcel
Student of the study course technical computer science at HS-Ulm
(http://www.hs-ulm.de)

PS: Because I don't want to bother you with german logmessages I've
tried to translate the output from apt-get.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express
Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take
control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now.
http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/