Crack racks again

[Postman]

I made some inventorying in the flat and noticed that I have enough parts for some rack action(5 surplus mobo's with varying processors and ram). I have also few extra nics.

I tried searching forum for some link on rack resources or even a how-to, but didn't find any. Am I just blind(as usual) or isn't there really anything about racks to a linux-newbie like me?

 

[JonB]

extra mobo's? If you need a router for a DSL or Cablemodem, you can make your own router (plus let it crack in the background if you add a hard drive)

Make your own router from old mobo (486 and 16MB)

 

[Russ]

JonB,

You actually don't even need a hard drive. Some of my nodes are running Freesco and I have them cracking in RAM.🙂

Russ, NCNE

 

[Postman]

I don't have enough hard drives for all the systems, so I was kinda thinking something that could boot from floppy and get the stuff it needs from server.

I allready have one box acting as firewall/proxy for my home lan. I wasn't going to make it my rackmaster, but hmh.. Anyway, any pointers to resources about making a rack-system?

 

[Russ]

You can look here for component list:

One's Crackrack

I use either Freesco or Klinux on my nodes. Klinux is easier, because it's all on one floppy, but I have some NICs it doesn't support. For Freesco, you'd do as follows:

Download and unzip it to floppy. Boot off of it, and get it configured. In my case, I have it setup for DHCP, so each node grabs an address off my router. This way, I can use a single disk for each node.

Then create a floppy pre-configured with the dnet client on it, ready to go.

Boot the node off of the Freesco disk. Login, then:

umount /dev/fd0

Remove the Freesco disk, pop in the dnet disk.

mkdir /floppy
mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /floppy
cd floppy
./dnetc

For Klinux, you'd boot off the disk, than CD to RC5 and unzip the tar ball containing the dnet client, and run it from there. I'm actually not sure about the configuration options for the standard distro because Kilowatt created a custom disk just for me.😀

Russ, NCNE

 

[TwoFace]

Hey Postman!

As I said on IRC it's real easy... just follow these simple steps:

1. Go here:
   Ccalverts SCCD or here: KLinux
2. Download whatever one suits you the most
3. Network your boxes
4. Setup your own pproxy on your connection box
5. Adjust the buffers to fit your herd
6. Install your preferred client on your "rack" boxes

and you should be ready to go...

Both client disks should be easy to setup and real easy to maintain so as long as you keep your pproxy filled and connected to I-Net regularly you shouldn't have any probs...

Now what are you waiting for huh? GO BUILD THAT RACK! 😛

Good luck!

 

[Wulf]

I just bought 5 HD's from 200-500mb in the for sale/trade forum for $25 and put windows on em. I dont know how much ram you need for the linux stuff but I havent had any problems with 16mb.

Its changed a little since my last post here it is
CrackPack

 

[Wulf]

JonB- Dou you know if that router will work with online gaming?

 

[Mandrill]

I use ccalverts linux disk and it works like a champ and is very stable.

since it cracks in ram, once it is started, you can yank the floppy and use it elsewhere. Freesco like Russ uses works well too but I find CCalverts distro to be a more straight forward process. since you seem to have a network, it will be a very easy process to get started.

Ccalverts distro works on as little as 8 megs of RAM so old simms can be put into action 🙂

Hope this helps and you get those puppiues going. we need all the horsepower we can get!

 

[Lord Demios]

Note to SCCD users. The page might change when GameBox get's posted onto the Lan connection to the net. I will post the new addy if and when it changes.

LD

 

[MrFluffy]

This is great help to us newbes at linux, exept for i have a huge problem w/ my login. It wont let me login. I set up the password in the instalation, but it wont let me chose a username, also after i set up ALL the partions (/boot, /usr, /, and the swap partiton(s).....) it wont let me boot from the HD. I made it put the boot stuff on the /boot, but it fried my HD. (one gig down the drain). Is it a problem w/ me or w/ linux? (red hat 5.2)