Jacek Radajewski started work on this document in November 1997 and
was soon joined by Douglas Eadline. Over a few months the Beowulf
HOWTO grew into a large document, and in August 1998 it was split into
three documents: Beowulf HOWTO, Beowulf Architecture Design HOWTO, and
the Beowulf Installation and Administration HOWTO. Version 1.0.0 of
the Beowulf HOWTO was released to the Linux Documentation Project on
11 November 1998. We hope that this is only the beginning of what
will become a complete Beowulf Documentation Project.
Jacek Radajewski works as a Network Manager, and is studying for
an honors degree in computer science at the University of Southern
Queensland, Australia. Jacek's first contact with Linux was in 1995
and it was love at first sight. Jacek built his first Beowulf cluster
in May 1997 and has been playing with the technology ever since,
always trying to find new and better ways of setting things up. You
can contact Jacek by sending e-mail to
[email protected]
Douglas Eadline, Ph.D. is President and Principal Scientist at
Paralogic, Inc., Bethlehem, PA, USA. Trained as Physical/Analytical
Chemist, he has been involved with computers since 1978 when he built
his first single board computer for use with chemical instrumentation.
Dr. Eadline's interests now include Linux, Beowulf clusters, and
parallel algorithms. Dr. Eadline can be contacted by sending
email to
[email protected]
The writing of the Beowulf HOWTO was a long proces and is finally
complete, thanks to many individuals. I would like to thank the
following people for their help and contribution to this HOWTO.
Becky for her love, support, and understanding.
Tom Sterling, Don Becker, and other people at NASA who started
the Beowulf project.
Thanh Tran-Cong and the Faculty of Engineering and Surveying
for making the topcat Beowulf machine available for experiments.
My supervisor Christopher Vance for many great ideas.
My friend Russell Waldron for great programming ideas, his
general interest in the project, and support.
My friend David Smith for proof reading this document.
Many other people on the Beowulf mailing list who provided me
with feedback and ideas.
All the people who are responsible for the Linux operating
system and all the other free software packages used on
topcat and other Beowulf machines.
