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FKrooG2
Working my way back
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join:2000-09-28
Tha Zone

FKrooG2

Premium Member

Anyone using PXE here?

Is anyone using PXE to booting to the network and run diskless workstations?
[text was edited by author 2002-11-13 11:02:59]

Starfish
Per Ardua Ad Astra

join:2000-12-28
Netherlands

Starfish

No, but if you're interested in this kind of material:

perhaps you should check out think link as well:

»ws9.jobnegotiator.com/index.html

Basically a complete guide on how to build a DC farm including 'How-to's about things like 'Diskless Boot', etc

The pictures alone make it a great site

Bohica0
Are You Crying Wulf?
join:2002-01-09
WU zone

Bohica0 to FKrooG2

Member

to FKrooG2
Sweet link Starfish, thanks!!!

Starfish
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join:2000-12-28
Netherlands

Starfish

BTW:

Team Starfire's 'Crunchenstein' is also on display

»ws9.jobnegotiator.com/ht ··· ein.html

grobinette
Southeast of disorder
MVM,
join:2001-01-27
22152-1106

grobinette to FKrooG2

MVM,

to FKrooG2
Those are some interesting and extremely innovative setups.

Starfish
Per Ardua Ad Astra

join:2000-12-28
Netherlands

Starfish

Yes, very innovative setups..especially with the netbooting and mounting over the network.

I also like the way some of those setups are stacked:

Take this one for example:

»bhs.broo.k12.wv.us/homep ··· ot1m.jpg

A few small rods (going through the mounting points) with a tube around it to act as a spacer...very nice

When I'm graduated (hopefully in June/July ) I'll take some time to mess around with things like that..

Hopefully I can add an AMD X86-64 CPU to the list by that time

grobinette
Southeast of disorder
MVM,
join:2001-01-27
22152-1106
·Verizon FiOS

grobinette

MVM,

I found several others to aesthetically appealing such as these two
»ws9.jobnegotiator.com/ht ··· dmf.html »ws9.jobnegotiator.com/ht ··· ter.html

And some were bewildering.

Pin
Premium Member
join:2002-06-19
The Dungeon

Pin to FKrooG2

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to FKrooG2
I once told KeysCapt that I didn't think what I had would qualify as a Farm, I thought it was more like a Garden.

After looking at those setups, I think my equipment is more like a Flower Bed!:o:o

I think I just found a new midrange project. I haven't messed with BootRom's since Novell 3.11. I thought they were a thing of the past.

It looks like for the cost of 1 Computer, you could put together a baby farm. :D

FKrooG2
Working my way back
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join:2000-09-28
Tha Zone

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FKrooG2

Premium Member

This is what I was looking for...

»forum.oc-forums.com/vb/s ··· d=107333
and
»forum.oc-forums.com/vb/s ··· amonster

and here is the linux setup Doc...
»folding.octeams.com/file ··· atta.zip

Starfish
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join:2000-12-28
Netherlands

Starfish


Whooo nice links

/Me is already making some basic plans for starting a similar setup

FKrooG2
Working my way back
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Tha Zone

FKrooG2

Premium Member

Same here... I have 4 very old P233 MMX systems that I can try it on. It will only be 930MB but it will be a learning experience....

Setting up the server today and will setup one other because I only have 1 NIC that is PXE enabled....

There is something about the idea of running clients on systems without HDs, CDROMs, or floppies that excites me...

I could run three 1600+ "All-in-One" mobo setups off of one 400Watt PS....
[text was edited by author 2002-11-16 17:13:49]

Pin
Premium Member
join:2002-06-19
The Dungeon

Pin

Premium Member

Hey FKroog

Keep us informed.

Downloaded the howto and will try it with some older P2's also.

Noticed that they mentioned the PC Chips Mobo. When I priced the cost of doing such a beast, I also was leaning toward a PC Chips Mobo. $59 for a board with onboard NIC, Vid, Snd.

I wonder if WOL works on a diskless / headless workstation!

edit--
One other thing, doesn't WinNT have a feature where you can make an image of a boot disk and use that instead of a bootrom?

FKrooG2
Working my way back
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FKrooG2

Premium Member

Not sure but from what I understand it trys to do in remote install of the workstation's OS on a disk connected to the workstation.

Starfish
Per Ardua Ad Astra

join:2000-12-28
Netherlands

Starfish


Are you talking about the 'yattamonster'?

Because of those nodes only the server has a harddisk. The crunchers will load the OS (via PXE -> Etherboot -> etc) into the RAM of the crunchers.

And the crunchers will run the client and store it's data in the /home/yatta/$hostname directory

I love this! After reading this how-to I suddenly have a much better understanding on how the various Linux software packages are related and how you can config certain things.

Suddenly I find it all very logical
Starfish

Starfish

Let me add a few, possibly interesting links as well:

»sourceforge.net/projects ··· herboot/
»nilo.sourceforge.net/
»netboot.sourceforge.net/

EDIT:

Wow! Check out these pictures of the Yattamonster..
»forum.oc-forums.com/vb/s ··· t1203730
Very clean setup!
[text was edited by author 2002-11-17 06:14:04]
Starfish

Starfish

It looks like there's already a Linux specially made for the Distributed Computing Community:

GAHnix: »dnaresearch.com.au/gahnix.html

And don't let the name fool you, I guess it just started with GAH because this is the list on the website:


DC Project Status
-----------------------------------------------
Tuxtime 0.2.0 - Complete
Genome@Home (Classic) - Complete
Genome@Home (FAH3.1) - Complete
Folding@Home (FAH3.1) - Complete
Distributed Folding - Complete
Seti@Home - Complete
Distributed.net (RC5/OGR) - Complete
Gimps (Prime 95) - Complete
ECCp-109 - Complete
-----------------------------------------------

Pin
Premium Member
join:2002-06-19
The Dungeon

1 recommendation

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to FKrooG2

RAIC-1 is underway!

Got the easy part out of the way!

Now to find those old NIC's with bootroms!

grobinette
Southeast of disorder
MVM,
join:2001-01-27
22152-1106

grobinette

MVM,

That's pretty awesome PinHead. You have been busy this weekend.

Starfish
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That looks very nice!

Can me expect more updates on your progress and experiences? That would be most certainly very interesting to hear

Pin
Premium Member
join:2002-06-19
The Dungeon

1 recommendation

Pin

Premium Member

Will do Starfish!:)

Contacted F-K in hopes that we can work in parallel while we each take on this task. I have only been playing with Linux for about 3 months, so I am afraid that the common tasks in Linux may be my biggest stumbling block.

Since I am using OLD P2 boards and processors, the main goals of this project are:
1.) Learn how to build one
2.) Spend NO money
3.) Document the process
First stumbling block was that I threw away those old ne2000 isa cards with bootroms. Sounds painful, but they wouldn't have done me any good anyway, they were Novell bootroms.

Second stumbling block was that preprogrammed bootroms are twice as expensive as brand new 10/100 full duplex NIC's. That's out. Looks like the 2 alternatives are to make floppy disk based bootroms. Finally figured out how to make one of those. I'll go this route since I have plenty of used 1.44 drives laying around. Another option I found is that you can add the bootrom file from »www.rom-o-matic.com to the motherboard bios and have the motherboard boot the nic. Haven't tried that yet.

Third stumbling block is that Linux versions come out too fast. So the documentation instructions don't seem to work on my version of Mandrake 8.2. But I am keeping some notes on how I found a way around it.

Progress Update:
Installed another board on the bottom of the stack so that it is now 6 boards high. The bottom board is the server. I have the server installed and I am half way thru the configuration process. It's night here so I can't provide a good picture of it's current state. It would be dark like the other pic. Hopefully I will have the first remote client up in the next day or two.

Contacted my local computer supplier, who's network I maintain, and inquired about out of warranty power supplies. A big grin came over his face and said how many do you want? They are going in the trash in the next week or two. hehe. I'll take 10, I just want the ATX pigtail off of them anyway. Now I can run 1 power supply for 2 boards.

So that it where it stands as of tonight. If I am successful, then I will be a proud owner of a 1.682 GHz P2 that is a total waste of electricity. I'll call it a Gremlin, since it is just big enough to be a pain in the arse; but not big enough to fit into the monster class.

Phase 2 should invoke the monster class!:D:D

Starfish
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Netherlands

Starfish


Thank you for the update PinHead!

Interesting to hear how everything is coming together and I'm curious what our resident cow (tm) aka FKroog will come up with as well

BTW: what project(s) are you (planning to) run on this stack?

FKrooG2
Working my way back
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Tha Zone

FKrooG2

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Well with my workload right now I put this on hold until the week of Thanksgiving. I took the week of so, I should have plenty of time to work on it....

My knowledge of Linux is the same as Pinheads so I hope I got the server loaded correctly.

My setup will consist of 4 P233 MMX mobos, 1 P2-233 and 1 P3-600 for a total of 1.7Gig. The P2-233 will be the server because it is in the biggest case. The 600 is in one of those bookshelf cases and the 233MMXs are going to be put together like Pinheads...

As for boot ROMs, I have a few 3c905CX-TXM to use and should work nicely. They have the PXE built-in...

Will post pictures as soon as I start to make any headway...
FKrooG2

FKrooG2

Premium Member

Here is the little workstation rack I built out of that heavy cardboard tonight.. Worked pretty good... Now to route power and network cables...

I am going to call mine GPF because doing this makes no sense and will most likely cause more headache then it is worth.

But I should learn something from this... ...

Pin
Premium Member
join:2002-06-19
The Dungeon

Pin

Premium Member

GPF is underway!

Looking good so far F-K!:)

Your almost ready for the fun part. I hope the PXE boot works better than this Etherboot.

I found a Realtek card that will at least contact the DHCP and start the boot process, but it fails on NFS mount.

Still awaiting the first full boot and then I'll start changing the script for TEN from F@H.

So far I've only lost 3 pins trying to get it to work.:D:D

Starfish
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join:2000-12-28
Netherlands

Starfish

said by Pin:

Still awaiting the first full boot and then I'll start changing the script for TEN from F@H.

I'm willing to give that a try as well.. so if you need a hand

Shall I give it a try? (Can't test if for you though )

Pin
Premium Member
join:2002-06-19
The Dungeon

Pin

Premium Member

Re: RAIC-1 is underway!

By all means!

Take a look at F-K's previously posted How-To:
»folding.octeams.com/file ··· atta.zip

There are 2 scripts that start the folding.
folding Seems to just SU and call yatta_folding
yatta_folding Seems to set a lot of parameters for F@H. I think most of this file is unnecessary, but I am not sure of how much.

Also, I think the entire distributed folding client will have to be copied to the directories where the 1 F@H executable was copied.

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.
maybe I could test for you hehe.

Starfish
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join:2000-12-28
Netherlands

Starfish


Working on it
Starfish

1 recommendation

Starfish

DFstart.zip
1,833 bytes

Ok, here's my first attempt (hopefully a 'hole in one' )

I left it running under the 'yatta' account..change that if you want.

More importantly:
I've added an extra parameter in the 'distrib_folding' file called 'DF_HANDLE'...please insert your own DF handle in there.

It'll automagically add it to the 'handle.txt' file later in the script (if it's detected that that file doesn't exist yet)

Also you have to follow the How-to to give the scripts the right permissions and how to place them in the correct directories, etc..

Good luck!

FKrooG2
Working my way back
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Tha Zone

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Yes please do Fishie...

I was lost during that part as well...

Added a few mins later:

Cool Fishie!!!!!!!!!! I will try it after the Server reinstall...

[text was edited by author 2002-11-22 12:17:33]
FKrooG2

FKrooG2

Premium Member

PinHead?

Are you running Mandrake 9? And if so that options did you install for the server?