Re: naked machines

never seen warewulf before, but after going through the site, I have to say it's
the best solution so far in the theory. Just need to implement it to say any
conclusions.
Thanks for the tip.

> On Thu, 2005-09-22 at 13:07, massimiliano cialdi wrote:
>> is it possible to run acluster in which some machines are "naked"?
>> I mean a computer with only mother board (with an integrated NIC to
>> boot up), cpu and ram; without any mass storage device (such hard
>> disk, floppy or CD), keyboard, mouse and graphic card.
>
> Yes, it's possible (at least if the BIOS of your naked machine is able
> to bootup without graphic card and storage devices, "press any key to
> continue" could be a serious problem when there's no keyboard ;).
>
> You need an initrd with a basic filesystem image (to be loaded into RAM
> at bootup) or you can mount all over NFS. You have to configure a DHCP
> and a TFTP servers (on the masternode) and your nodes must have a
> network card that support network booting (PXE).
> The node's kernel must support the initial RAM disk
> (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD) and, depending on your choice, the kernel level
> autoconfiguration of the IP (CONFIG_IP_PNP, CONFIG_IP_PNP_DHCP) and the
> root file system on NFS (CONFIG_ROOT_NFS).
>
> You can find some howtos on the community contributions page (search for
> "ltsp") and, for general DHCP+TFTP+PXE systems, all over the network.
>
> ...I'm not sure, but ClusterKnoppix should already supply such system
> and it needs no effort to buildup a test cluster configured in this way,
> give it a try.
>
> There could be some issues concerning rootfs over NFS, browse the ml
> archive for more info (related to some codes that don't like it, maybe).
>
> Some time ago I found it useful to use the warewulf initrd image
> (formerly nodefs, now vnfs) as a template to build my own initrd stuffed
> with oM. I'm not sure it's still suitable for the same purpose, you can
> take a look here: http://warewulf.lbl.gov/. Basically, you just need the
> usual fs tree and some startup utility, sshd could be useful for remote
> administration, other utilities could help as well. Of course you need
> the userspace-tools package.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Ciao
>
> Moreno
>
>
>
>
>
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