I'm getting increasingly annoyed at ClusterVision failing to deliver a cluster we can work with. The story so far is:

• Monday: I have a chat with Louwrens on the phone - he sends some documentation on CVOS. I then have a poke around the masternode, with the aid of the documentation:
  
  
  
  • CVOS seems quite simple - just a decently packaged set of scripts and utilities for setting up the fiddly bits on the cluster.
  • rsync is used to grab and update images on running machines.
    
  • Installation is done via a PXE boot, rsync then a pivot_root to swing onto the disk.
    
  • In summary, it looks useful enough to have a go with. Especially for managing the worker nodes, which fit nicely into the cloned machine class (not so useful for the grid servers, though, but might be able to help us do backups).
    
  
  
• However, I find that they've given us x86_64 images. The experience of trying 32 bit DPM on x86_64 warns us against using this.
  
• I email Louwrens saying we need i386 builds. He emails back on Monday and we agree he will build these images for us.
  
• Tuesday: Alex phones. I'm at lunch and miss the call.
  
• Wednesday: I have an IM chat with Louwrens. He says that they had problems making i386 images. He says he'll get Alex to call me, but he doesn't.
  
• Thursday: I email Alex and Louwrens outlining our concerns - we've now wasted almost 4 working days since the cluster was installed and we've made no progress in setting it up.
  
• Thursday Afternoon: As I'm writing this I get an email from Louwrens saying that Alex did try and contact me today needing some questions answered. Did he try using skype as I asked? I had it on all day - no missed calls. I've asked at least for a summary of the issues via email.
  

Hopefully we will make progress tomorrow, but if there's no sign of a working solution by Monday I'm going my own way with this.