This manual describes the administration of the Tycoon market-based distributed resource allocation system. Tycoon allocates computer resources in a distributed cluster like PlanetLab, the Grid, or a Utility Data Center (UDC) to users. To do this, Tycoon uses a market-based mechanism where users have a limited amount of currency that they use to bid on resources. Users receive resources in proportion to their bids.

This manual is primarily useful to people who want to 1) install Tycoon client software so they can run their jobs on Tycoon resources, and/or 2) provide Tycoon resources so they can earn credits. It describes how to download, install, and configure clients and providing hosts. People who want to use resources to run their programs should see the User's Manual.

The Tycoon client's base requirement is version 4.4 or later of Redhat Enterprise Linux (including its derived distributions like Scientific Linux and CentOS). It should also work Fedora Core 3 or later. We have tested the client with RHEL 4.4, CentOS 5, Fedora 3, 4, 5, and 8. In addition, there is a Win32 client. The client probably works on other Linux distributions, but this has not been extensively tested.

The base requirement of the Tycoon auctioneer (i.e., the server) is version 4.4 or later of Redhat Enterprise Linux (including its derived distributions like Scientific Linux and CentOS). It should also work Fedora Core 6 or later. We have tested the auctioneer with RHEL 4.4 and CentOS 5. The server is unlikely to work with other distributions like Debian-derived distributions because it is sensitive to where configuration information is stored, how services are started, etc.