Windows Diskless Folding!!!

[yanz]

there is a setting in bios, where it can set to "halt on no errors" that bypasses nearly everything. Has worked on everything I tested it on, with the exception of some really old motherboards. some boards with built in video will allow the video to be shut off. The thing that I am now kinda P.Od at is that I have gone out and purchased a buttload of new video cards that I now do not need Oh, well.. I only spent $20 or so

now you made me think i should remove the video card on my dedicated folding rig!

can't remove the hdd though, power failures are almost every two days or so. fortunately it has an ups.

 

[ghettocomp]

now you made me think i should remove the video card on my dedicated folding rig!

can't remove the hdd though, power failures are almost every two days or so. fortunately it has an ups.

I have noticed that the clients backup their work on the main server directory around every 2 hours or so. upon restart there should not be too much lost, just 2 hours at the very most! I waited for two hours for the first backup to appear then killed one client. When it was restarted, it picked up data from the backup and then continued on from there Since I am always messing with my network, that backup routine has been a great plus.

 

[Soichiro]

Nice guide. I should try this now that I found out my old skt A mobo and PSU still work *gasp*. But how often does it backup the WU to the server?

 

[ghettocomp]

Only every 2 hours.
But that is enough for most things. at least not too much is lost if something
happens to the clients.

 

[ghettocomp]

After spending the last few days monitoring and fooling around with the network
portions of this Idea. I have determined that it is at the top of my Folding needs list!

I did find that you should have this headless setup isolated from any networking you may have. Problem that developed was both DHCP functions on at the same time will
eventually confuse them and the network will drop the clients fast. It is not
a very serious problem as you have to make sure the primary DHCP is started
first, then boot the TFTPD32 server. Then when each client is rebooted
everything is restored from the auto backups checkpoints and all is well


What I am thinking after I have seen it all stabilize over the next week or so
is that I may have to create a connection sharing rig and have the whole
folding network run through that should be good from there.
I feel that may keep both networks reasonably isolated from each other,
especially if the isolated folding network is given completely different IP
addressing.

On to bigger and better. Next thing would be to see about making individual
changes in the configs depending on the IP address requested or hard coded
in the servers registry. should be just a little matter of learning a little more
Linux or forcing the change with a bootable Thumbdrive?

 

[the garynator]

so you say isolate the network... what about an internet connection? Say i have a dedicated server, and all of the clients, would i have to have a seperate router/switch AND a second internet connection, or will hooking the diskless network up to my normal network w/ internet router to router work? or do you just mean have a dedicated server?

 

[PLOBBY]

Hehehe looks like my closet, except that I only have two running...

 

[ghettocomp]

Well, I have added another mobo to my wall-o-Crap, another Frys Speciale
Now if only I would quit messing with the setup, I might get some serious points!

so you say isolate the network... what about an internet connection? Say i have a dedicated server, and all of the clients, would i have to have a seperate router/switch AND a second internet connection, or will hooking the diskless network up to my normal network w/ internet router to router work? or do you just mean have a dedicated server?

Right now, everything is through one of my windows rigs and acting as a TFTPD32 server. If/when I redo the connections, I think that I will be using my NT Server and open up the internet sharing components. Then Add a switch to the shared side and i believe all would be good. Seems to work fine as is, though if the smoothwall machine is ever rebooted, it kills the folding clients. I then have to restart the tftpd server program to regain communications with the clients again, and sometimes with everything else on the network It works, somehow...

EDIT:: 01/19/06 On the site for the TFTPD32 program is a set of instructions on how to program the server to get the MAC address from the registry and match it up with the IP you want to use. Very simple actually. That I what I have since done and this seems to work very well!
__________________
This Sig is Fake!!

 

[dwschoon]

Well, I have added another mobo to my wall-o-Crap, another Frys Speciale
Now if only I would quit messing with the setup, I might get some serious points!


Right now, everything is through one of my windows rigs and acting as a TFTPD32 server. If/when I redo the connections, I think that I will be using my NT Server and open up the internet sharing components. Then Add a switch to the shared side and i believe all would be good. Seems to work fine as is, though if the smoothwall machine is ever rebooted, it kills the folding clients. I then have to restart the tftpd server program to regain communications with the clients again, and sometimes with everything else on the network It works, somehow...

EDIT:: 01/19/06 On the site for the TFTPD32 program is a set of instructions on how to program the server to get the MAC address from the registry and match it up with the IP you want to use. Very simple actually. That I what I have since done and this seems to work very well!
__________________
This Sig is Fake!!

When I have more time, ill have to try this. Ive been trying to convert my win2k fileserver to overclockix to run my farm, but have been having trouble with the share drives and the printer. If this works, ill just leave it win2k and still use it as the server. BTW I like your sig.

 

[dz_jad]

hmmm. very interesting topic.
so, I'm not a network guy, I know the min. basics. You have a router, and hook the computers to it, and the internet connection, and it works after you run the windows stuff to connect to it. Here is my question: how do you isolate it then? like, I see you say isolate, I think I might, sorta, know what you are talking about, but how do ya do it?
you run another hub or router between the server and the clients? and just plug in from the first network to the hub for the internet connection?

 

[ghettocomp]

In actuality, I have not isolated any rigs from the network at all. seems the tftpd server searches for clients on an entirely different port than the standard DHCP process. To minimize the chance of crossing and confusing any IP addresses, I entered a more or less Static IP scheme into the server computers registry. The website that publishes the TFTPD32 server program has very detailed instructions on how to do that.
since doing that little bit of footwork, I can now use my main rig on off days to go 'Diskless/windowless windows' folding as well. So now I fold on one IP and run windows on another one entirely! So now when I have finished using windows, I reboot using the PXE network boot option and the rig picks up the new "assigned" IP and begins the diskless/windowless option almost immediately.

The only drawback I have with this farming software, is that you can lose up to (more or less) two hours of folding time on a restart. Since each motherboard uses its entire raw processing powerand can make up wu's in short order, that time lost I do not consider to be too much of a problem.

 

[jstutman]

Bringing this back to life, Everything is well here using the above method. However they dont appear to be finding the "file" they need.

tftpd32 shows the systems booting, but they all fail with a "file not found"

I extracted the headless client zip into the same directory, just like it says. edited the file too.

 

[ghettocomp]

Bringing this back to life, Everything is well here using the above method. However they dont appear to be finding the "file" they need.

tftpd32 shows the systems booting, but they all fail with a "file not found"

I extracted the headless client zip into the same directory, just like it says. edited the file too.

the diskless.zip file has to be unzipped into the same directory as the TFTPD32 server program is. you will have 4 things to be unzipped:
pxelinux.0
kernel
initrd
and a folder called: pxelinux.cfg

Oh another thing...
in the Reilly page of instructions here. in regards to changing the .cfg file in the pxelinux.cfg folder, DO NOT - and I repeat: DO NOT USE WORDPAD like he says, Use notepad to change the " default " file. wordpad will cause that error sometimes. after that, you should be good to go! EDIT: Before I forget, The ' default ' file has no extensions, so it should not look like ' default.cfg ' or ' default.txt '

Friday or Saturday night this week, I will be giving very detailed instructions to set it up on Win 2000 including how to get newer mobos and stubborn older motherboards up and running diskless, along with getting everything non-essential (like video) off of it . Should be clear.

 

[WarriorII]

cleeeear azzzz mud.






me thinks I have 2k around here someplace....... runnin XPsp2
(that's second 'puter #2)

 

[ghettocomp]

cleeeear azzzz mud.






me thinks I have 2k around here someplace....... runnin XPsp2
(that's second 'puter #2)

XP is good too I Just have an extreme preference for W2K. the directions
on the origional site use XP and are very good. ( except the wordpad/notepad thing )

 

[jstutman]

I Also had to seperate the networks. The reason behind this, was devices that connected to the network that were none PXE had problems. For example, my vonage device was taking about 2 minutes to finally get assigned a ip. This problem may be bad in the future when Im expecting phone calls. I also had problems getting my xbox and ps2 online. The problem appears to be the program's slowness at assigning ip address's.

made sure, i followed the instructions to the "T" however, still get this error.

ile <0> : error 2 in system call CreateFile The system cannot find the file specified.

Fixed it, I had mistyped the boot file. its supposed to be pxelinux.0. I had pxelinuc.0 (stupid fat fingers)

Has anyone got EMIII to work with this? using the IP 192.168.1.11
what would the directory be to allow emIII to monitor?

 

[jstutman]

Still Not working.... New Error

Previously allocated address acked [09/02 12:00:09.741]
Read request for file <pxelinux.0>. Mode octet [09/02 12:00:09.851]
<pxelinux.0>: sent 24 blks, 11800 bytes in 0 s. 0 blk resent [09/02 12:00:09.913]
Rcvd DHCP Discover Msg for IP 0.0.0.0, Mac 00:118:5E:84:4A [09/02 12:12:15.132]
DHCP: proposed address 192.168.1.11 [09/02 12:12:15.538]
Rcvd DHCP Rqst Msg for IP 0.0.0.0, Mac 00:118:5E:84:4A [09/02 12:12:17.288]
Previously allocated address acked [09/02 12:12:17.288]
Read request for file <pxelinux.0>. Mode octet [09/02 12:12:17.397]
<pxelinux.0>: sent 24 blks, 11800 bytes in 0 s. 0 blk resent [09/02 12:12:17.444]

 

[ghettocomp]

Fixed it, I had mistyped the boot file. its supposed to be pxelinux.0. I had pxelinuc.0 (stupid fat fingers)

Has anyone got EMIII to work with this? using the IP 192.168.1.11
what would the directory be to allow emIII to monitor?

I don't think it works. I have been trying several things and nothing yet. The files are correct but seems the addressing is limited. Could be just to prevent tampering, or it is just because it is Linux OS running windows ( 98 ) and no share available. However, if things need to be known, just point the web browser of any computer on the same network at the address of each client and you will get links to log files an stuff. this is great because of the limiting of cpu cycles that could be used for folding

 

[iceage]

This looks like a great deal! I have a few questions though:

1) Will this work if I'm using a wireless router to network from a DSL modem? Our house isn't wired for broadband in every room and I have our family computer downstairs and my folding farm is planned for an upstairs room (ergo the wireless router idea.)

Thanks!

 

[dwschoon]

I don't think it works. I have been trying several things and nothing yet. The files are correct but seems the addressing is limited. Could be just to prevent tampering, or it is just because it is Linux OS running windows ( 98 ) and no share available. However, if things need to be known, just point the web browser of any computer on the same network at the address of each client and you will get links to log files an stuff. this is great because of the limiting of cpu cycles that could be used for folding

I even tried mapping a network drive to it, and no luck. I did get one up and folding though. It works great!!! Thanks ghetto!