Diskless Cruncher

[Silverthorne]

I just finished setting up my first diskless cruncher, I just pulled my p3 933 out of one of my cases and put it in the basement. Now I'm installing Xp on my first AMD chip that I've had in years, it's a Athlon XP 2000. My first AMD was a K6 350 I believe.

Now I'm having a :beer:

 

[Freewolf]

Nice,

 

[Coquito]

sounds good.:beer: knock off the back of that cabinet, & you'll rest easier knowing your temps will be lower.

 

[TofBnT]

Nice!!

 

[GreatRewards]

OK, perhaps my ignorance is showing, but how on Earth do you build a diskless cruncher?? Where's the OS live? Where do the WUs hang out? Where does the SETI@Home client live? I suppose you could boot to a floppy, but don't you need more disk space than a floppy can provide?

I tell you one thing, just reading the posts in this forum really humbles a guy. i can still remeber a time not so long ago when I thought I knew EVERYTHING! LOL!

 

[RaySun2Be]

GreatRewards, you can boot up from floppy, or from the network. You can run in a RAMDISK, or send/receive WUs from a network share.

There are small footprint Linux Oses out there that can run off floppy or ones like Knoppix that boot from CD.

Oh, and for you folks that are or want to run crack racks with small HDs, look into Win98/2000 Lite, and strip that OS to the bone, get rid of unwanted OS bloat, and let that cruncher run!

The latest developments in XPLite now see clean installations of Windows XP in under 350MB and Windows 2000 approaching less than 200 MB (excluding paging file).

 

[Silverthorne]

Originally posted by: GreatRewards
OK, perhaps my ignorance is showing, but how on Earth do you build a diskless cruncher?? Where's the OS live? Where do the WUs hang out? Where does the SETI@Home client live? I suppose you could boot to a floppy, but don't you need more disk space than a floppy can provide?

I tell you one thing, just reading the posts in this forum really humbles a guy. i can still remeber a time not so long ago when I thought I knew EVERYTHING! LOL!

I got the info for it
here. The only problem is making sure you have the proper nic or drivers. The whole system is on the floppy and connects up to setiQ to get work units.

 

[Silverthorne]

Originally posted by: Coquito
sounds good.:beer: knock off the back of that cabinet, & you'll rest easier knowing your temps will be lower.

I can't knock out the back of the cabinet because it's a block wall. The cabinet is a about 7ft long so I have plenty of room for more crunchers and the basement is always cool, after all I do live in northern Minnesota.

 

[grendel8]

Has anyone had experience doing this in Linux? I'm looking to build a 'cruncher' farm in 1u rackmounts and would like them all to either boot from a central server (ala bootp) or from cdrom. I seem to recall seeing an entry on this somewhere before, but can't recall where it was Thanks

grendel

 

[CXGJarrod]

Originally posted by: grendel8
Has anyone had experience doing this in Linux? I'm looking to build a 'cruncher' farm in 1u rackmounts and would like them all to either boot from a central server (ala bootp) or from cdrom. I seem to recall seeing an entry on this somewhere before, but can't recall where it was Thanks

grendel

You might want to try Knoppix. You basically build a cdrom of all the stuf you need in the OS and the entire OS is run in RAM. http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

 

[ProviaFan]

That's not truly diskless, if that floppy disk drive that I see there is indeed connected to the motherboard.

Nice cruncher, anyway.

 

[Silverthorne]

Originally posted by: jliechty
That's not truly diskless, if that floppy disk drive that I see there is indeed connected to the motherboard.

Nice cruncher, anyway.

Ok, guess I should of said HDDless cruncher.

 

[OverVolt]

Here's what i plan to use to run my crunchers diskless, the server does't even have to have a harddrive, but i'd reccomend you have one and install knoppix to that, and install directories for whatever DC project you want (so you wouldn't have to download it each boot). Or you can try openmosix and see how well it handles your DC client and just run several threads/instances of it.

The 1U rackmount cases will cost a ton of money, i found a $32+ shipping+ 300w PSU+ case at newegg (m-atx), and a 1U rackmount case would prolly cost more than i plan on spending per diskless cruncher (>$200)

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Silverthorne

Originally posted by: jliechty
That's not truly diskless, if that floppy disk drive that I see there is indeed connected to the motherboard.

Nice cruncher, anyway.

Ok, guess I should of said HDDless cruncher.

I'm just kidding... Have fun with your new cruncher.

BTW, Overvolt's setup looks nice. I've thought of playing with OpenMosix from time to time also, but haven't (so far) been able to come up with the money to buy enough systems to make a decdent cluster.

 

[grendel8]

Thanks for the info OverVolt. I totally agree with you on rackmount case prices. Mine ended up being more than a third of my per unit budget. I've ordered the components for the first system to 'test' the fit and compatability of everything before I shell out cash for more. My parts list is:

DynaPower 1U case 200w ps
BioStar MNCG400 RTL nForce2 mboard
Athlon 2600 XP (in case I'm multiplier locked)
2 sticks OCZ 256M PC-3200 ram
Thermatake 1U HSF

Damage to bank account/system - $441

I'm sure I could do it for less, but I was trying to play it conservative with the first system. My big concern now are Linux drivers for nForce2.

grendel

 

[Coquito]

you can always find cheap 1us on ebay, just have to find one ending at the right time. I missed out on a couple by falling asleep, but when the time is right, some cheap ones will show up.

I need the 1us because it would be really difficult to fit any more systems in my home. ith a nice rackmount cluster, I can save myself a lot of space.