On Wed, 11 May 2005 09:10:56 -0700 Mark Knecht <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 1) Wouldn't a diskless workstation with Gigabit networking be > basically as fast as a standard machine with a medium performance disk > drive? I.E. - 1Gb/S == 125MB/S. Assuming 50% bus efficiency I'd still > get >60MB/S throughput which is higher than my desktop disk drives > provide me today. I'm sure there is latency across the network but > overall it seems this would work pretty well. > Technically, yes. In reality, the GigE needs to be on a 64-bit bus. The standard 32-bit bus will be saturated with - network, ide, and audio traffic. You *might* get away with it if one of the newer chipsets is being used - nVidia nForce. However, I suggest you drop the standard diskless and use a different diskless approach - make a LiveCD with the appropriate software, determine how big a ramdisk you'll need and how much working memory and load up the appropriate amount of dram. That way no nfs mounts would be needed, only a database socket. The LiveCD could even be a USB flash device, if the motherboard supports booting it. > 2) The HOWTO says to "Also make sure you have one interface to the > Internet separated from the local area connection". Is this to ensure > that the diskless workstation doesn't try to do DHCP from the > Internet? > > 3) Assuming the answer to #2 is 'yes' then does this imply that using > diskless workstations absolutely requires separate network cables? > I.E. - Can diskless workstations share a network with standard PCs? > (I'm concerned here about keeping the DHCP servers from colliding > since the Wireless router also has a DHCP server. > There can be multiple DHCP servers on the the same sub-net. Each DHCP server needs to have it's own port, or the client needs to have the ability to set persistant IP address' for it's host server. Otherwise, one of the servers will respond to the boot request - usually the wrong server. > 4) I have a couple of old desktop machines I want to use for learning > experience doing this before I build something small that would sit by > the TV. They support 'network boot'. How do I tell if they are using > either PXE or Etherboot? Or does it even matter? > PXE boot will show itself when booting the system with a disk drive - there is a rom associated with the ethernet chip/card, which has the boot code and can be configed during boot. Some PCI cards have a rom socket, but not rom. They need a floppy or CDrom with the Etherboot code setup for them. Bob - -- [email protected] mailing list
