On Tue, 20 Aug 2002, Miguel A. Mota wrote: > Hi all, > I recently constructed a 7 Node (+ 1 Masternode/Terminal & 1 Server) > parallel-processing Linux cluster as a high school science project partially > funded with a few grants from Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies. In terms of > hardware, we are a Star topology single-pool heterogeneous 100 Base-T > switched cluster with speeds ranging from 450MHz to 800MHz, utilizing AMD > and Intel processors. We are using standard TCP/IP utilizing DNS, DHCP, > NFS, NIS, FTP, Apache, and Samba. For the operating system, we are using > Red Hat 7.3 Professional. I'm preparing to ease administration by > separating the network into two networks. Instead of buying a router I > wanted to try make one with a spare system, something between 200-400MHz. > And if possible (to show it off) out of an 486 equivalent pc.
I use a 486-100, and it is overkill. Minimum of 16MB though... too much hassle with less. > It would not > have a keyboard, mouse, or video card Some bioses don't like booting without a keyboard. or video card. May be easier to leave them in. I have never heard of using a mouse with a router. > since I would like to administer it > via vnc. No, use ssh... much lower overhead, and very functional. > I would also like for it not to have a hard drive and boot off a > super disk or zip disk. I did't know that you could boot straight off of zip disk. CDRW seems fairly popular these days, though older BIOSes can't boot off them either. > I initially was directed to the LRP, but they > directed me to you. Oh? That is odd. LRP can probably do this as well, though it hasn't been updated in awhile. > Can someone help me and tell me what to do now? Go to http://leaf.sourceforge.net and look at the available options. I think Bering would be a good choice, but almost any of them could probably do it. Bering and Dachstein have very good documentation. The general approach is usually to download a floppy image, write it to a nice new floppy (image writing is not tolerant of dead sectors), and boot up on the destination box equipped with keyboard, video and monitor. The system loads off the floppy and runs entirely out of RAM. There are usually configuration steps you have to take with the RAMdisk, and you have to "back up" the changes to the floppy. After you have things working with ssh and all, then transition to headless operation. Many people dislike the poor reliability of floppies in dusty corners, so Compact Flash disks, CDRW, and hard disks are all alternatives that let you add more functionality and suffer less degradation from dust than floppies do. (Even with hard disks, LEAF routers almost always run entirely out of RAM, only using the disk to load the software from at boot time.) The boot media is usually FAT (msdos) formatted, and syslinux, isolinux, and loadlin can all be used to get Linux going. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff Newmiller The ..... ..... Go Live... DCN:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Basics: ##.#. ##.#. Live Go... Live: OO#.. Dead: OO#.. Playing Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries O.O#. #.O#. with /Software/Embedded Controllers) .OO#. .OO#. rocks...2k --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by: OSDN - Tired of that same old cell phone? Get a new here for FREE! https://www.inphonic.com/r.asp?r=sourceforge1&refcode1=vs3390 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ leaf-user mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-user SR FAQ: http://leaf-project.org/pub/doc/docmanager/docid_1891.html
