Debian Cluster Replaces Supercomputer For Weather Forecasting

wazza brings us a story about the Philippine government's weather service (PAGASA), which has recently used an eight-PC Debian cluster to replace an SGI supercomputer. The system processes data from local sources and the Global Telecommunication System, and it has reduced monthly operational costs by a factor of 20. Quoting: "'We tried several Linux flavours, including Red Hat, Mandrake, Fedora etc,' said Alan Pineda, head of ICT and flood forecasting at PAGASA. 'It doesn't make a dent in our budget; it's very negligible.' Pineda said PAGASA also wanted to implement a system which is very scalable. All of the equipment used for PICWIN's data gathering comes off-the-shelf, including laptops and mobile phones to transmit weather data such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, cloud formation and atmospheric pressure from field stations via SMS into PAGASA's central database."

Re:hmm

[Lehk228]

that would be HURD

Re:hmm

[Bigos]

it's a cluster, in other words a herd of computers :-)

Obligatory

[Nefarious Wheel]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of ...

oh, wait...

Re:hmm

[nacule]

More importantly, is it Vista capable?

Where is...

[darekana]

I tried:
apt-get -f -y install gweather
But it failed with something about "ldconfig: /lib/libearthquake-2.3.so.0 is not a symbolic link"

Is libearthquake in unstable?

Re:One thing always missing from such stories...

[JK_the_Slacker]

6 to 8 years, you say? Well, then, they'll be ready to upgrade about the time the next version of Debian is released.

Re:Debian?

[jonaskoelker]

you shouldn't be running anything but compiled source on a performance cluster.

you wouldn't be running anything but source compiles on a performance cluster. :p

Re:Where is...

[palegray.net]

You've got it all wrong; you should be using built-in tools like these:

more weather - For when you need a new update.

less weather - Got too much weather? Reduce it!

vi weather - When you want to change the weather.

emacs weather - When you want to change the weather on 15 separate planets at once.

cat weather - It's raining... oh, never mind.

Re:Where is...

[gbobeck]

Did you enable the "Universe" repository?

Re:hmm

[JohnBailey]

More importantly, is it Vista capable?

Yes, but only home basic.

Re:Debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Debian is intended for servers and runs on more architectures than any other linux distro.

Fixed it.

Re:hmm

[FudRucker]

since it is a cluster that would be correct, a herd of hurd...

Re:Where is...

[Stormwatch]

Microsoft Weather - seems to be a very fine weather, but all of a sudden it may turn into a hailstorm.

Re:Where is...

[sincewhen]

Hailstorm? or Blue Sky Of Death?

Re:Debian?

[indifferent children]

Give the guy a break. He just wanted to see Gentoo compile in less than 2 weeks; he had a cluster handy...

Re:Debian?

[AvitarX]

the code the clusters was actually running was pretty much always compiled by hand.

You really oughta use a compiler for that.