Overclockix on an old machine

gulp35 · Mar 22, 2005

I have been playing with Overclockix 3.7. I am planning to build a folding farm and want to get some experience. I tried installing it on an ancient PC - a Cyrix 6x86-P166+ that currently runs Windows 95. It has a network card (network Everywhere, Model NC100, ver 2.1) and I was thinking of setting up Linix on it so I could test the headless stuff out between a new machine I am building and this old clunker (before I buy/ build the rest of the farm).

I tried to do the CD load up, but it just kept rebooting...it never got to the place where you put in the “cheat code” even. This CD worked previously on another machine so I do not think there is anything wrong with the CD. Is this thing just too old to mess with or am I missing something obvious? Is there some other Linux that will work? If I use another version, will it teach me anything about getting two Overclockix machine to work together?

Thanks for your help!

hibner · Mar 22, 2005

PM Arkaine23. I'm sure he would know

theMonster · Mar 22, 2005

I never could get it to work with my K6-2 450 and 3com network card. It worked fine with MandrakeLive though

moz_21 · Mar 22, 2005

If it is compiled for 686, it will not load on a K6-2. I found this out recently trying to load Yoper on a K6-2 500. It didn't like it...

Arkaine23 · Mar 22, 2005

It's binary compatible (i386), so odds are the trouble is with isolinux.

electrorcamd · Mar 22, 2005

Even if you can get it to boot, it most likely will not work very well on that old of a computer. I could get it to boot on a K6 266 @ 300, but it would freeze everytime it got to starting X. It may just have a compatability problem with that comp though, so it may work fine if you can get it to boot on it.

gulp35 · Mar 22, 2005

Damn Small Linux will not boot either

Over lunch I downloaded Damn Samll Linux, and then tried to boot that. It skips right past it and loads Windows 95 (at least with Overclockix, it kept trying to reboot. Next I may try a floppy version just to see if I can do it!

gulp35 · Mar 22, 2005

HAL91 works!

It is a floppy based system. Can I boot overclockix off a floppy (at least enough to get it to read the CD)?

moz_21 · Mar 22, 2005

Can you get into the bios and change the boot order to CDROM-FDD-HDD?

gulp35 · Mar 23, 2005

Bios

Yes, I changed the settings...bbut it does not load it. Last night I tried Redhat, oth a CD boot (I got the constant reboot when I did), and then from a floppy boot disk (got a kernal panic about a idle process being kill - did not really understand.)

I was hoping to learn some Linux on this (and I am). I also am learning it can be a lttle fussy...I can't get the HAL91 to recognize the harddrive.

Its not treally a big deal...just looking for some experience before I do it "for real". I expect Fed Ex to deliver my prototype board today, and I struck a deal last night to buy a farm that is already running Linux.

theMonster · Mar 23, 2005

I had all the same issues with my AMD K6-2 450. the ONLY version I could get to work was MandrakeMove. I tried every other version I could find and none would work.

King Warg² · Mar 23, 2005

try knoppix.... i use cluster knoppix on an old 233MHz p1 with 128MB RAM and it runs pretty well.

Arkaine23 · Mar 23, 2005

A pre-3.4 version of Knoppix, actually. The overclockix's are all based on 3.4-3.7 of Knoppix and consequently will have similar version of isolinux. Whereas pre-3.4 versions of Knoppix use syslinux instead.

King Warg² · Mar 29, 2005

just slap redhat 7 on there, that will run good on old machines....

gulp35 · Mar 29, 2005

I tried RedHat

I don't know the exact version (its at home...I'm at work). I would not boot up either.

I have put that to the side for right now. We build a Mobile XP 2500, and we have it running at 2506 MHz right now running knoppix (Overclockix).

It is still not perfect...everytime we reboot we get two windows that always open up. We can't make "X" start automatically. We can't get a CPU temp so we have to reboot and look at the BIOS to see if we are in the danger zone.

We are learning the ins and outs of Linux, which is what we wanted to do. If everything goes rioght, we will pick up our "Linux farm" this weekend and maybe have it up and running next week some time.

Arkaine23 · Mar 29, 2005

Hardware monitoring is not difficult. Is this HDD-installed or running from CD?

For getting X to start, I'd need you to show me the output of-

ls /etc/rc5.d

What windows are popping up? kmix? a webpage help document?

gulp35 · Mar 29, 2005

Overclockix details

Wehave installed overclockix on the Hard drive. We still can't seem to get monitoring to work. We have tried to follow the instruction about lm_sensors but we obviously do not understand enough linux yet.

We do have it set to run level 5-still no X autostart. Here is what is in the etx/rc5.d folder:
file:/etc/rc5.d/S10syslogd
file:/etc/rc5.d/S70cron
file:/etc/rc5.d/S91ssh
file:/etc/rc5.d/S95fixwinefah
file:/etc/rc5.d/S95samba
file:/etc/rc5.d/S97ntpdate
file:/etc/rc5.d/S98ntpd
file:/etc/rc5.d/S99Foldserver

The windows that open everytime we start X are a Konqueor window and a Konsole window.

The other squirrelly thing is getting FAH to work. We have the two folders for FAH, but when you clicj\k on the "shell" to start it it would not "restar" We tried start and it installed another version in the "FAH" and it runs there, but we can't get the two copies in server and server_2 do not run (although the logs show they did run for a time when we were first installing Overclockix.

Finally, how do we set up FAH as a service so it automatically start when the computer boorts (reboots).

Thanks for your help with all this.

Arkaine23 · Mar 29, 2005

file:/etc/rc5.d/S99Foldserver - This indicates folding should run at startup as a service. You should be able to see it by using the command top and checking the load average listed is more than 1.0.

su
[enter root's password]
ln -s /etc/init.d/kdm /etc/rc5.d/S99kdm

^ Should make X run at startup.

And finally, it sounds like KDE is loading a saved session. In the Kontrol Center, you can adjust whether or not KDE remembers what you were doing previously or whether or not to load a previously saved session. I think its in the Administration/login area of Control Center.... but I'm not on a linux box right now so I'm not 100% sure.

Is this version 3.7 or LTSP 2.1?

gulp35 · Mar 29, 2005

Version

We are running 3.7. Thanks for your help...let me try this and see how it goes!

gulp35 · Mar 29, 2005

Progress!

Ok, I types in ln -s /etc.... while in root
I got another prompt (could not tell if it worked or not).

I rebooted...stilll does not start "X"

rebooted, FAH did not restart, load average .22 .25 .1

restarted FAH

ran top and load average is 1.09 1.03 .51

I did get rid of the sessions auto starting..so some progress

Thanks for your help. I hope you have some ideas how to fine tune this system....

Overclockix on an old machine

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