Software for PrimeNet farm
 

Sweet! A Linux section! This will be great for all of us planning to build megafarms in our basements... :whistle:

I'll get the ball rolling. I've got the hardware planning for my farm done, but I have little experience with Linux, so what would you recommend as far as software to run the farm? Should be fairly simple to set up and maintain and run without HDDs or monitors. Preferably nodes should boot from a floppy (I've got about half a dozen sitting around collecting dust right now).

Have a look at my site [url]http://ws9.jobnegotiator.com/[/url] and specifically [url]http://ws9.jobnegotiator.com/html/netboot.html[/url] which does more or less exactly what you want.

PM

I've read through that before. I've skimmed through it once again. I think I can handle all that, but I'm a little cloudy on the /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/rc.local section on netboot6.html page. Since this file is taken from the Prime Monster I assume it is already set up to automatically boot and start the prime client? If so, which one (statically or dynamically linked)? If not, what modifications are necessary?

The [b]rc.local[/b] is set up to boot the board and automatically start the mprime client (or any other DC client you want to run).

You can use either of the clients. I've tried both of them and they both works.

PM

Is there any performance difference, dynamic vs. static?

Not that I have noticed. I could have run some performance analysis on the two clients, but I haven't.

It is actually more important to restrict or limit the network traffic by optimizing the parameter settings and disk writes.

I do prefer the statically linked client though, as I then can play around with the server without having to worry about available libraries. Fair enough, the prime client is very good and do not require highly specialized libraries, but some other DC client do. So, I tend to standardize on statically linked clients and minmal server support.

PM

Hello from Suse 8.2! I have no clue how to work it, but i can use the browser!

I hope that one day i can march with the pengiuns:grin: , but for now... it's boot camp.

And now... Back to your regularly scheduled tread.

Are their any collected lists of PXE compliant Network Cards in particular chipsets used on motherboards? Is the Realtek 8100C PXE compliant?

I have an Intel PXE NIC booting from the LTSP server, but am not excited about trying to get flashing a MB BIOS with etherboot...

Okay... so it's taken me, what, nine months to finally get around to this? And amazingly, pretty much all of it works... except for one part.

The Linux server has two network interfaces. One connects to the 'normal' network with all my regular PCs. The other connects to the 'farm' network and serves up the various info and software. It has to be this way so that the server can hand out the IP addresses to the nodes when they boot, unless I missed something there.

Therefore, in order for the nodes to be able to send and receive work from the PrimeNet server, the 'farm' interface has to be bridged to the 'normal' interface. I've been attempting to use IP Masquerade to do this, with some success. I can successfully ping anything I want from the node using the IP address. I cannot, however, ping anything using a domain name. It comes back: "Resolver error 0 (no error)" and goes no further. I haven't been able to find any information pertaining to this cryptic message, and have tried to no avail to solve the underlying problem.

Anyone have an idea what the problem is?

EDIT: If you're wondering, I can ping with domain names fine from the server.

Is the DHCP server handing out the right DNS server?

As far as I can tell, the DNS server has now been set to my ISP's primary DNS server in all fields that want it (dhcpd.conf as well as lts.conf). But still no go pinging mersenne.org. (And yes, I did restart the dhcpd service after I changed it and restarted the node so it could get the updates settings.)