Diskless seti?

[blade47]

I know it can be done. Would one of the linux gurus be willing to create a bootable linux floppy for the seti client? Basically like the guys did for the RC5 client.

I've been toying with the idea of building a small crackrack to run seti on but since I know nothing about linux and no one else has done this I've had to put the idea on hold for now.

 

[divide by zero]

How big is the SETI client?

 

[Engine]

I honestly doubt that it's possible. I don't know the size of the SETI client, but aren't the WU's 350k in size? Plus, is there even a way to buffer the WU's in RAM, like there is in RC5?

 

[divide by zero]

Version 3.0 of the SETI client is ~728KB. The RC5 client is 190KB including config files and buffers for several work units. I know Kilowatt did a lot of work to wedge the RC5 and a stripped down version of Linux onto a floppy (Bless him!). I'm not sure if there are an extra 530KB free.

Just speculating, but maybe if ftp could be squeezed onto the boot floppy the client could be retrieved from a machine with a harddisk.

I'm pretty sure he uses a ramdisk to store the RC5 buffers so the 350K per WU for SETI may not be the problem.

$0.02, keep the change.

 

[Sukhoi]

Guys, if he's building a crackrack, the work units would most likely be stored on a SETIQ server, with each computer only having 1 WU in RAM. Other than saying that, I can't help you, sorry.

 

[cory]

i have 8 nodes in a diskless linux cluster running seti.

prob is you need to know the specific network card
you will be using and need a linux server to mount
the root filesystems from.
do you already have a linux server running ?
( you should have 2 network cards in it)

i could make up the disks ( i sent info to somebody on
even doing the other stuff and might have some of it sitting
around)

the boot disks are basicly a boot rom
that then loads everything across the network.

 

[blade47]

cory

I knew it could be done. I've seen one but it was with v1.?? something. Unfortunately I know jack about linux so no I don't have a linux server. Are you sure this is the only way to do it? If you could would you please check these pages out and see if that's the same way they were doing it. LRP and
LRP.Gibbsoft

Actually it looks like they may have updated their seti client on the boot disc since the last time I've been there. I've got to leave for work so I don't have time to check it out right now.

 

[Ken g6]

Here's a web page on how to do it. This method takes two floppies, so you don't necessarily need to know your network card.

 

[Ben98SentraSE]

This implementation is ok, but it relies too much on the floppy. Just use NFS and use the floppy to boot from and mount the network drive. Whalla. Hard disk space. You have to have one linux box setup for NFS and the others can just be mobos with processors, ram, vid card, and NIC. The only difficult part would be to setup different NICs on each system. This is going on in the back of my mind and a buddy's mind. I'm working mucho OT these next two weeks so I don't have much time for ANYTHING including this. What I would like to do is design a Linux Seti Server distro and then a Linux Seti Client distro. (distro the correct term for this?). The Linux Seti server would be able to use probably any 170MB hard drive for this, maybe lower. Probably lower. Again I will work on it. Using NFS makes a lot more sense than relying on the floppy as much as that guy does above (I think)

 

[blade47]

I'm going to check around a little more and see what I can find. It looks like I might have to learn a little linux.

I was really hoping to find something that would just boot from a floppy or two and automatically load seti, network card support, run totally from a ram disk, and connect to my setiQ server on my windows box using tcp/ip.

 

[cory]

you really need a linux box to act as a nfs server and
hold all the other little things you might need.

and remember you need a root filesystem for each node.

it doenst have to have much but you have to have some space set
aside for each node.

i have about 50 meg for each node but i know i could get by
with less.

remember with seti there is not just a wu
you have to have a dir to have the other *.sah files

seti will not work with just a floppy.

it isnt worth the hassle when you can set up a linux
box on an old pentium machine and then have the nodes connect to it.

i made my own scripts so that it would only take less than 5
minutes to set additional nodes.

the nodes do not have keyboards or video cards.

in fact you dont need a floppy driver either if you get
a nic that you can put a rom in and know somebody that
can burn some roms for you.

so to put together a node just pop the memory and cpu
in. add the network card and p/s.
a floppy with a disk that has a bootrom image if you dont
have a rom on the nic.

then spend a couple of minutes on the server telling it
that this mac address gets this ip address and a couple
of other minor things and turn the node on.

 

[blade47]

cory

Thanks for taking the time to explain some things to me. You make it sound so easy, which it probably would be if I new anything at all about linux. I guess it looks like when I get alot more free time I need to setup a Linux box before I even think about a crackrack.

Edit: Time to start looking for a linux for dummies book.

 

[cory]

i think you should be able to set up a linux box without
to much trouble.

the current versions of linux seem to install so easy compared
to before.

once you get a linux box going send me an email
and i will send you some of my notes and scripts

 

[blade47]

Thanks I'll do that. It'll probably be awhile since I've been very busy lately.