Rating: 
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I was hoping for great things from this book, but as a lot of the other reviewers have said very disappointing. To much time was spent on linux, which if you are going to be building a beowulf you would know, and even if you didn't there is a endless supply of linux knowledge on the net which greatly exceeds what is in this book.At the end of the day I DID build my own low-end beowulf, but sadly I can't say that any of the information that I needed was found in this book. It might have been there but the unorganized layout mad it impossible to find anything.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I was hoping for great things from this book, but as a lot of the other reviewers have said very disappointing. To much time was spent on linux, which if you are going to be building a beowulf you would know, and even if you didn't there is a endless supply of linux knowledge on the net which greatly exceeds what is in this book. At the end of the day I DID build my own low-end beowulf, but sadly I can't say that any of the information that I needed was found in this book. It might have been there but the unorganized layout mad it impossible to find anything.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: If you are looking for hands-on book to help you build your own PC cluster, this is not it. The book contains a collection of short definitions and examples on a myriad subjects without giving the reader any real substance. As a senior sysadmin, I feel buying one of the many Linux configuration/administration "HOW-TO" books along with O'Reilly's "Managing NFS and NIS" and "TCP/IP Network Administration" would provide more useful and indepth information to anyone wishing build a Linux based PC cluster.
Rating:
Summary: Not a book you want for building Beowulf.
Review: It is a book about building Beowulf. But many chapters are spent on introducing linux and mpi. You can find more useful information from internet instead of this book.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing, useless hunk of paper
Review: Now when I pick up a Beowulf cluster computing book, do I really need introduction to Linux, and its applications? Do I really need an explanation of what scripting is, or basic administration ? I am interested in the details of how and what Beowulf is, how it is done and preferably some code instead of the half page swiss-cheese like snippets with missing relevance. With all respect to the authors this book is very disappointing overall. The Beowulf-HOWTO is much more useful.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing, useless hunk of paper
Review: Now when I pick up a Beowulf cluster computing book, do I really need introduction to Linux, and its applications? Do I really need an explanation of what scripting is, or basic administration ? I am interested in the details of how and what Beowulf is, how it is done and preferably some code instead of the half page swiss-cheese like snippets with missing relevance. With all respect to the authors this book is very disappointing overall. The Beowulf-HOWTO is much more useful.
Rating:
Summary: beowulf book aimed at people who know nothing == bad joke
Review: The other reviewers are right, this is a genuinely pathetic book that you should not even consider buying. This book might be worthwhile if you are starting more or less from scratch and know next to nothing about linux, computers, or networks, but if that's the case your first step should be to hire someone who knows, and they won't want this book. it pontificates in general terms about a number or obvious issues without explaining explicitly how to tackle any of the multitude of configuration issues that come up.
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