Linux = Kilowatt, ccalvert or ????

[Dantoo]

Hi guys,

I'm fitting the Starship up with a new phaser bank. I have loaded Mandrake onto the Master machine (server if you will) and it works ok. The linux RC5 client cracks fine on this machine. Now I wish to add two slave nodes to it.

The server and these first two nodes are Celeron 566's on ASUS P2B-VM Mobos currently with 64MB RAM (have an old 32MB stick going in to one of them eventually).

They are all in cases with standard cooling and 1.44 floppies. Only the server has a hdd at this stage, 2GB.

The nics are a generic brand - Skymaster 10/100 that come with a linux driver.
I will be connecting them through an 8 port 10/100 hub.

I will initially have the master on a dial-up connection but will eventually wean it to an ADSL ICS.

The next step is to ..........?
I guess I have to bring the nodes up with one of the floppy distros.
Do I also have to configure the main client in some way so that it "serves" the nodes with work?

Errrr..heeeellp!

 

[Russ]

Dantoo,

Yes, if the slaves are not directly net connected, you will need to setup a pproxy on your server. The pproxy software is here. Then you might want to set up the stats software, although that's not necessary for basic functionality. That is here under Personal Proxy Statistics Generators. It is the first one on the list.

I've found Klinux the easiest to use of the single floppy distros. But, I don't know if it will support your NICs. For your nodes to connect to the server, you will need to know the address of the NIC that's in it.

Russ, NCNE

 

[Dantoo]

Heaps of thanks as usual Russ.

Which of these pproxies should I use?
http | ftp Linux libc5 (x86) [313] (updated Jan/26/2000)
http | ftp Linux glibc2 (x86) [313] (updated Jan/26/2000)

Is it the PHP download that I need from Personal Proxy Statistics Generators? I can't see a Linux one there.

I'm cheating a little here and have a work experience student from a local high school helping me out. I don't think I could've got as far as this without him.

I've copies of klinux 2.1D and 2.2 now, I guess the next thing is to try and boot with them and see if I can get something working.

 

[MWalkden]

Dantoo, Kilowatt should be able to answer any questions, he should be on-line soon too.

 

[Captain_Rob]

This is an idea I had for a SCCD, but I?m not good enough with Linux to do this myself.

Freesco has a floppy based Linux router/firewall client Their Linux disk has many of the other features which people here are looking for in a SCCD. Here?s an example of what is supported from the Freesco disk:

DNS Server, DHCP Server, Time and Control Server, Telnet Server, Web Server, Print Server, Remote Access Server, multiple tty?s, modem PPP connectivity, and a Read/write enabled floppy (the file system is FAT so it is read/write compatible under both Windows and Linux).

The Freesco design means they only need one version of the disk. It loads the NIC drivers as modules to save space. The have a few common NIC drivers built in, and support for most other NIC's is just a matter of copying the pre-compiled module to the disk.

They have a program called snarf installed on the disk so you can pull additional data from an ftp or http server. I tried Freesco out for a few days and it worked great. However, I could never get the dnetc to fit into the ramdrive and could not figure out how to make the ramdrive use the additional memory (128mb) the system had.

If Freesco?s client could be modified to create a slightly larger ramdrive, a script could be used to automatically download and start the dnetc client (or even a pproxy). Here is the basic idea of the script I had in mind:

# insert some kind of IF statement here to make sure the needed connectivity
# is established in case we are waiting for a modem connection to come live
mkdir /dnetc
cd /dnetc
snarf http://www.anywhere.com/dnetc
chmod +x dnetc
snarf http://www.anywhere.com/captain_rob.ini
mv captain_rob.ini dnetc.ini
chmod +rw dnetc.ini
./dnetc &
# <modify above to run on a tty?>

 

[Kilowatt]

YAWN.../Kilowatt Rubbing his eyes to get the night goobers out

I thought someone was talking about me. :Q

Dantoo, if your running a newer version of Mandrake (6.0 or above) get the Linux glibc2 (x86) [313] pproxy.
I don't know that brand of nic, but I'll see if I can find out something.
Do you recall what the name of the Linux driver was for those nics?

After setting up your pproxy on the &quot;Server&quot; all you'll need to do is give the Klinux nodes the IP of your server pproxy.
Make sure you use the same IP range (192.168.x.x) and subnet (255.255.255.0) for the whole herd.

If your not running a DHCP server on the main Linux box, you'll have to run &quot;netconfig&quot; on the Klinux nodes, and fill in the IP number, subnet at least.
You don't need to set the &quot;port&quot; number to connect to the pproxy with, but you could if you want.

IMHO you don't need a &quot;Personal Proxy Statistics Generator&quot; unless you want to setup something like Mika's running.
You can always just look at the xxxcon.log or the xxxrc5.log that the pproxy will generate.
If you end up with a large herd, yeah go ahead and set one up. It does make it easier to track all the nodes.

Another thing, if you have any Winblow$ boxes (what are you using now?), you can hook them to the same network, and all boxes can share the same pproxy.

YAWN again...../me needs more coffee



Captain_Rob, Good to see ya again, it's been a while.

The idea I had behind my Klinux, was to just run the dnet client with network connectivity, off a single Linux bootdisk.
More and more people are wanting this and that to be included.
If they want a full fledged Linux machine, I think they'll just have to use something like Freesco, CClinux or even the Materhorn floppy distros.

What I'm doing (or at least trying to do) with Klinux v3, is give it the ability to write the dnetc.ini back to the disk without overwriting the boot.image.
I've been trying different things that haven't worked out yet.
My next attempt will be to make a small ramdisk (512 bytes inside the ramdisk running Klinux) to make the image of the dnetc.ini and save it to the outer edge of the floppy.

Sound confusing? It is! :Q

YAWN.../me gets another cup of coffee
I better take care of some customers, because Klinux doesn't pay anything.

<Edit> I found this on the SkyMaster nics I hope you can read Korean.
They all say NE2000, so you'll want the Klinux-2.1D.
This won't guarantee it'll work, as there are NE2000 clone cards that don't work under Linux period.

<2nd Edit> I was looking around at the different &quot;Personal Proxy Statistics Generators&quot; and came across this new one I've never seen before.
For Win32, but it looks pretty light, so as to not use up much of your resources.

 

[Dantoo]

Wow the world is spinning fast today - or is that my head!

Guys - heaps of thanks as usual.

I am running Mandrake 7. (Easy to install - believe me!)
Have the pproxy now, but not yet installed.
I've downloaded the ppstats but will load it on when there is time to think.
Have Klinux 2.1D on diskette. (It is OK to store the dnetdocs.zip off the disk, right?)
Will try and boot a node soon as I get the pproxy up.
Have emailed the NIC driver to Kilowatt. (Don't even read Linux yet let alone Korean)

I have 4 Windows boxes here at the office (2 just crack RC5 but I pretend I need them here), but I'm moving this thing home, where I will connect it to an 8 port switch also attached to at least 2 windows machines.

Gee this stuff is interesting - nearly exciting!

Hey MW, you been beating up on the Feds while I was away?

 

[ccalvert]

I am afriad that I have more or less stopped development on the SCCD since I never have any time to work on it anymore, so I guess that at the moment, Kilowatt is the one official floppy disk developer. I have been talking to him via email, and have turned over some of the stuff that I had been working on for future versions of the sccd like the webserver (there are some unoficial versions featuring this, in addition to extra NIC support, which I gave to a few people) and the write to disk support which I never got around to fixing.

If the SCCD works for you, great. If it doesn't, I am afraid that it probably isn't going to start working in a future version, since there probably are not going to be any future versions.

The bright side of things is that I have kind of started on another project which should be rather cool, but I am afraid that it doesn't have anything to do with distributed computing.

 

[MWalkden]

Ahhhh.....No Dantoo! And I didn't take any of DanC's trout either!

(My head is spinning too! Linux!:Q)

 

[Dantoo]

ccalvert

Thanks for your efforts on behalf of the team. It's guys like you that really make this the &quot;happiest place in the world&quot; (sorry Walt).

MW ...... you be good now y'hear!

 

[Dantoo]

Dumb question - Is the node supposed to be able to boot from the Klinux disk or do I boot it with a dos disk?


Whup!! Booted with a Linux boot disk and now the node and the server can ping each other with Klinux loaded.

Now for the pproxy.

 

[Kilowatt]

<< ...now the node and the server can ping each other... >>

Dantoo, That's a good sign, those Skymaster nics kind of had me wondering.
They are using the tulip drivers, just so you'll know for future reference.

You think Mandrake 7.0 is an easy install, try 7.2, it's even easier.
Welcome to the &quot;Wonderful World of Open Source&quot;, it's getting better everyday.


<< Is the node supposed to be able to boot from the Klinux disk or do I boot it with a dos disk >>


Once the disk is made, just boot it. But you probably know that by now.
I wasn't around last night, a friend of mine was in town and we went partying. (can we say slightly hung over? :Q)

You could do like (he shall remain nameless OK Russ) and try to look at the Klinux disk from WinBlow$, then email me to say it's incomprehensible gobbledygoop on there. I'm still LMAO at that sometimes.

As far as the pproxy goes, it won't do you much good until you have a connection to the internet first.

ccalvert,

<< ...Kilowatt is the one official floppy disk developer.. >>

I don't feel that way, I'm just trying to help some people out.
I must say I've learned alot from doing it though.
Once Klinux has the ability to write the dnetc.ini file back to the disk, Klinux v3 will more than likely be the last.
If there is any room left after saving the dnetc.ini file, I might try to squeeze telnet into the image.
Then maybe it could be run without a video card or keyboard, I don't know yet.

 

[ccalvert]

Kilowatt, I know. I ment it more in a &quot;I don't believe that there is any other person working on something similar&quot;, rather than &quot;Kilowatt is the last person left on the island and thus wins the prize money.&quot;

BTW, good luck getting everything working. If you happen to find the bug in that code that I sent you, let me know... I never did figure out what it is, and would be interested to know.