Transient "Beowulf" cluster of Erlang nodes.

[Peter-Henry Mander]

Hi y'all,

I have a small project in mind, and would like to know whether someone 
has done it before, and if so, how?

I intend to harness the redundant processing power of our office PCs as 
a pool of Erlang nodes while everyone is out (overnight or over the 
weekend, hence "transient Beowulf cluster") and carry out some stress 
tests on our product using the office PC cluster to share the processing 
load. The scheme is to create a Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.net) style 
boot CD-ROM containing R9B that is inserted into the appropriated PCs, 
which are rebooted or turned on and left to boot up without any further 
intervention.

The main question is how to get the central controlling node, or all the 
nodes to automagically discover which PCs have been assimilated into the 
Erlang cluster without any user intervention, and produce a list of 
available nodes?

Are there any other aspects I have to be aware of?

Pete.