- 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?
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?