I have been given the opportunity to build a linux cluster out of a student lab with dual processor G4 machines.
Since it is a student lab, the machines need to boot the default OS (macos9) if all else fails, but ideally boot linux when reset at night. To this end, I want the open firmware to boot using this command "boot enet:192.168.2.1,yaboot.hack" at night, but using "boot hd:\\:tbxi" by day. This can be achieved with a boot script that after bringing up the DHCP interface, tries to get a file with tftp and if it fails then it boots from the harddrive. Unfortunately, the dang thing sits in the tftp attempt forever. Well at least ten minutes before i crash it and try some more forth stuff. So I have been learnign a ton of forth and how to manipulate OF but I still can't figure out how to set the tftp-retries variable. If someone could give me a pointer or two I would reatly appreciate it. .. In detail, Passing "boot enet:192.168.2.1,yaboot.hack" to the command line, results in the file being downloaded from the clusters master server (192.168.2.1) and it is then executed. If the server is down, the damn thing sits in a loop retrying forever. can't i set the tftp-retries option using the first stage bootloader CHRP script, and catch a throw when it fails to get the file which then causes the boot script to execute the "setenv boot-device hd:9,\\:tbxi" command and then proceeed as normally ? this would provide us with an IDEAl solution. After burning my eyeballs and brain out all day I can't figure out how to set this damn tftp-retreis option in forth at the OF prompt. Surely there must be a modular way to bring up the network interface with DHCP (using OF commands) and then do a tftp test ? I became very hopeful when I found that you could fire up a telnet connection to the open firmware using " enet:telnet,192.168.2.2" io and then telnetting to that IP. If such a simple command can do that, surely there must be a way of using the obp-tftp package to do what i outlined above. I just lack any idea of how to do it. flames > /dev/null Peter
