diskless boinc?

[none1]

Is anyone running a linux server with diskless workstations, with the workstations running boinc?

Got any start up scripts? How tos? Which LINUX version?

Thanks!

[zulfy26]

I have Knoppix, dunno what version ... 5.8 or something, and i just pop the CD in and boot into linux, only bad thing is - if the computer restarts you loose any progress on any WU's you're hashing.

UPS are very yes.

[none1]

I have Knoppix, dunno what version ... 5.8 or something, and i just pop the CD in and boot into linux, only bad thing is - if the computer restarts you loose any progress on any WU's you're hashing.

UPS are very yes.

Thanks, I'm looking to go TOTALY diskless, no USB, no hard drive, no floppy, no CD ROM. So no knoppix. I'm looking to boot each machine over the network from a linux boot server. That's my ideal.

BUT, fewer people seem to be going diskless these days, AND, cdroms can be had much cheaper than in the past. So if I can't get diskless running, maybe knoppix will work.

Are you manually starting your BOINC from Knoppix, or have you installed BOINC onto the knoppix CD and start it from a startup script?

I'm looking to have over a dozen machines going, and don't want to have to manually start up BOINC on each machine.

Thanks!

[Enkidu]

I'm looking to do the same thing in a few months...

This is one of the better sources I've found:

http://teammacosx.homeunix.com/forum/cgi-bin/ikonboard.pl?;act=ST;f=17;t=700 (it is for FAH but principles are all the same)

Hope that helps!
Enk

[none1]

I'm looking to do the same thing in a few months...

This is one of the better sources I've found:

http://teammacosx.homeunix.com/forum/cgi-bin/ikonboard.pl?;act=ST;f=17;t=700 (it is for FAH but principles are all the same)

Hope that helps!
Enk

Thanks Enkidu, been there done that with most of those links. ;) Here's one of my favorite of that vintage, written by our own OCing folks for seti classic.

http://www.ocsetiteam.com/other/cluster.htm

I ran a seti classic farm off that how to for a while.

Most of those how tos are based off of (by now) pretty old linux distributions. I was hoping someone had built a farm with a wirte up recently .....

1) At the very least, a script will be needed that will start boinc each time a client boots off of the server. Not hard, but I hoped someone was already there ......

2) While the whole server boot is really cool, I can get used HDs or CD's for around $6.00, so it would only add $100 to the total cost for each client to have their very own OS (e.g. knoppix with a seti boot script).

Setting up a farm with just nics is way cool, and a great linux learning experience, but I found it to consume much time getting things set up. Also, if the server goes down, the whole farm stops working. So a boot drive per machine;

1) is a ton easier to set up
2) adds robustness to the farm
3) adds some costs
4) takes up some more space and
5) is not as cool

So if I found someone with a new write up complete with BOINC scripts, i'd go that way, doing everything from scratch, I'm leaning towards a bunch of cheap boot drives.

Anyone else have any thoughts as to which way to go to get a BOINC farm going?

Thanks!

[ric]

It's sad to mention it,
but windows Clients are still creating much more credit on the same cpu with same work versus any kind of *nix* clients

Not having the experience myself but reading from other forums and reading the claim of so much users...
m$ licences too can be bought cheap from friends or over "internet"

Edit/added
not bad must be a *nix environment with wine and the m$ boinc client running

[David]

I think Arkaine's Overclockix could be modified for network boot for SETI? It can be done for FaH.