A cluster of 6 heterogeneous Gentoo machines that booted from the network
##What is it?## The compile cluster consisted of 6 computers with no operating system installed. They booted off the network using PXE. Then the machine would join a distcc cluster and begin compiling code.
##When## I used to run Gentoo as my primary OS. It’s a really nice distribution but every package you install is compiled form source. Unfortunately that gets annoying, especially when you have many machines that need their packages updated or you are installing on a lower powered laptop.
My friend Philip Deljanov and I had both problems and I had a lot of spare computers. So together we put together the boot image and other components and built our own compile cluster for both of us to use.
##Technology##
##Success?## The cluster worked well and saved us lots of time. Plus it was damn cool to see all those machines work together to something (arguably) useful.
##Improvements## More machines? Maybe, it did (as you might expect) make a lot of noise.