...it's a BLARGH post.

All I have to say is "SCREW YOU, DEBIAN 6.0.3!!"

I spent this morning setting up/configuring the cluster controller [or the "head node" as my documentation calls it].

I wired it up, without any network connection as I'm not at that stage yet.

Stuck in the Debian disk, boots fine.

Using it as a live disk, works fine.

Install OS... Nope.

For some reason it doesn't want to install. I have no idea why, it says the HDD is "unclean."

Well, it isn't. I checked, formatted, shredded and reformatted. There is literally nothing on it.

It partitions fine, but won't install. I tried both i386 and AMD64 [both loaded fine.]

Luckily, I had a Ubuntu 10.10 disk sitting about.

Unlike other Linux/GNU distros, Ubuntu doesn't let you set up root during the install. So, I've had to do it manually. Which took all of 30 seconds.

I'm about halfway through setting up the controller thanks to Debian not installing. [i should have finished that today...]

I've made about 3 pages of notes so far [which I forgot to grab when I left... so I'm writing this from memory.] and I think, once I'm done, I'm going to go through them and write them up properly. Then try again with no notes/guides.

As I haven't really used Linux/GNU properly, I'm pretty much just copying commands from the papers I have. As I go on, hopefully, I'll actually understand them.

As for the testing, it seems I can't use Quake like I planned. So I'm going to have to find something else. I've been looking at BPS [beowulf performance suite].

As usual, comments/suggestions are welcome.