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Cheap Diskless Seti Crunchers

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TC

Senior Seti Addict
Joined
Jan 15, 2001
Location
Denver, CO
I was about to post about this when I got an email from Morpheus. I wrote him about this idea, and rather than draw it up again I'm just copying my email into this post. This idea is a continuation of the clustering/mosix idea, but with slightly different goals in mind. Have a read folks:

Hey have you played with this diskless linux project (ltsp)? It looks like a great way to build cheap crunchers since all you need aside from the basics is a floppy drive and a nic. No video, cdrom, hard drive, etc. The system boots over the lan and then presumably could be configured to grab seti during boot too. It's the K12LTSP distro based on red hat. I just setup a server tonight and it works, except for some config stuff I think. I can get a machine to boot from a floppy, query the server and get an IP via dhcp, and from there the os is moved across the network. That part works, but I think I've got to edit some files on the server to send the proper screen resolution info, etc. The machines boot, but they either don't make it into kde, or they make it in partially and get stuck with a white screen and an X for the mouse arrow.

Anyway the cluster idea hasn't been dropped either. Richard pointed out that by using mosix in conjunction with this ltsp software you can build diskless workstations as I just described, and then from your server you can start as many instances of seti as you have machines in your cluster. Mosix will then move those seti clients to each machine. It's just as good as if you ran seti manually on each machine in the cluster, but those machines can be diskless without video, and there's no time spent on installing an OS and configuring it. You just throw a basic box together and boot it with the floppy. The server and mosix take it from there. Sound good?
 
That sounds very sweet!

fewer parts = less cost
fewer parts = less power drain (gotta keep those AMD 5v rails UP!)
No os install =save time

Questions though:
monitoring temps, etc- any way to do this?
Overclocking- this will have to be done first and proven stable first, correct? since no vid card, no BIOS access....

Still a lot of improvement though: keep a hard drive with an OS/install files around....build, oc, test and get the settings straightened out. Then pull extra stuff and run diskless AND OC'd!
 
If you want to overclock it a good bit you would definitely have to test it like you normally do - no getting around that. I don't know about monitoring temps. You can telnet into most linux setups, which gives you access to just about everything as though you were physically at the machine, but you can't run an X windows session that way. I would suspect most linux hardware monitors are designed for X only, not the command line, but I could be wrong. I don't think this is ideal for a highly overclocked set of systems that you've got to worry about all the time. Ideally use the money saved on those parts to add one or two more boxes that makes up for them not being overclocked to the max. The other points you reiterated are very nice - less power consumption, lower cost, and less time involved.
 
This dsitro of linux doesn't require video to boot, and for those few motherboards that won't post without video, cheap pci video cards can be bought for a few $'s a piece.
 
Greg M said:
That's the way I would likely go. Super cheap PCI video, or integrated video, to ease troubleshooting.
I haven't been to a show for a while, but the last one had several vendors with boxes of pci cards for $4 each. If you don't use a video card you can watch a system boot up from your server by using "tail -f /var/log/messages" If it isn't working you'll see it there.
 
Something that nobody has brought up and it's kind of schocking not to see someone say it. Using this method or anything with linux, there are no license fees. I'm sure that everyone who has more then one computer has the same amount of windows licenses. By moving to the diskless/cluster machines we not only lower hardware costs but also software costs since were using an open source operating system with open source software to use it. :) all that combined means one hella of a deal IMO.
 
Keep this thread alive.

I have tons (ok, maybe a few dozen pounds) of 486 and older pentium (60MHz-350MHz) parts here.
I wasnt planning on using any of them, been handing them out as repair/replacement parts to friends with older PC's.

I could almost build a huge "Micro-Stompinator" with the parts I have laying around here, if I didnt need hard disks, video cards, monitors, etc.

What is the slowest that this type of setup would run on?
 
The server needs to be decent since it will manage everything. I'd say a P3 of 500MHz or more, and ram doesn't hurt either. The diskless nodes themselves can be fairly old - you could probably get a pentium classic to work fine if it has a fair amount of ram, lets say 32MB. We'll have to double check that one because the OS is being loaded into ram, along with everything you want to run on the node. My suggestion is to read everything here for a start:
http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html
 
The server works great on my duron machine with 256MB of ram. Here's the log showing one of my machines obtaining its IP via dhcp and then loading the OS.

log.jpg
 
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Is there anyway to run a diskless computer in a windows environment? Or can I control the Linux distro on the diskless comp using a windows environment? I'm using winXP on my main computer right now, but I've got a PIII 550 in the basement without a harddrive.

Are there any FAQ's, if they exist, to set this up?

-Joe
 
I think windows can also boot over the network, but I'm not familiar with how its done. I'll see if I can find anything.

**Edit - yes it can be done, but the bottom line is for big bucks aka Windows Terminal Server. Here's a how to I stumbled across:

http://www.ltsp.org/contrib/diskless-windows-howto.htm
 
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Greg M said:
With TermServ you can have a bunch of slow systems connected, but since all processes are run on the server, what's the point?
The same is true of the linux terminal server that I've setup. The key to fixing that is mosix, and I don't think windows has an equivalent unless you use the clustering service in advanced server $$$$$$
 
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