The method I described really doesn't use any special PXE utilities or anything... it just network boots a kernel image w/ some custom made tool within the initrd somewhere that spits out the MAC addy to the console (possibly over and over), and may eventually reboot on it's own, or wait to be powered off (depending on facilities available). It could also do it via passwordless ssh to the head node and drop it there or something clever... either way would work. But as mentioned, the only way that works in parallel is if you have serial consoles that are already mapped. Ironic that serial consoles are required for parallel collection. lol
So to me, it looks like you have two options to guarantee accurate sequential node assignment:
1) Collect the MACs serially (one at a time).
2) Write a tool that does the operation I described over the serial console. (and then submit it to OSCAR! ;-))


Jeremy

At 07:11 PM 12/12/2003, Bernard Li wrote:
Hey Jeremy:

I am not too familiar with PXE-BOOT - what sort of utilities are available for me to use on the nodes so that I can grab the mac address?

I only needed it for the re-direction so that I am sure that the mac address that showed up on OSCAR's collection tool is the right one (in order) - because some times for you boot up 5 at the same time, for whatever reason #3 may have hardware problems and didn't boot, and #4's mac address comes before and that would screw up your assignment - which won't be pretty :-)

Thanks for your help!

Bernard

Question: why were you needing to do this? I ask because some people collect MAC addy's over the serial ports using a method that's similar...
1) just creating a utility that spits out the mac address and offering it up PXE style
2) boot nodes, listen on serial ports, which are already mapped to specific nodes
3) because serials are mapped to nodes already, MACs spit across serial can now be linked to nodes
4) adjust PXE settings to build an OS and reboot nodes (this could be automatic, or via remote power control)
Viola! Parallel MAC collection accomplished! In a configuration w/o serial consoles, this same method could also be employed serially (no pun intended) just by using power control alone. I hope to offer such an option someday in OSCAR.
Jeremy


Thanks,

Bernard

Jeremy Enos wrote:

In /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default, change the add the following to the "append" line:
append = "console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600"
(don't blow away the other stuff on the append line of course)
You may also want to increase the speed of course. Let me know how that goes.
Jeremy
At 06:16 PM 12/12/2003, Bernard Li wrote:


Hey Jeremey:

I don't know _exactly_ what speed it's transferring at, but I set it to 115200 in BIOS and also in agetty and it seems to be okay. I am actually not too concerned about SIS, I needed PXE-BOOT!!

Know how to get that going? ;-)

Thanks,

Bernard

Jeremy Enos wrote:

Ah... that's because in the OS environment, something needs to be set explicitly for console redirection. The SIS network boot kernel can be set that way very easily (just change options on the kernel loader line). However... I tried this, and it worked just fine, but: it slows EVERYTHING down to the speed that the serial line can transfer the stdout!!! Hence... it seemed like a very bad idea for using during the build. That was at 9600 baud though... I know the Cyclades can be set faster, but I didn't experiment with that yet... maybe it's not such a big deal.
Jeremy
At 01:39 PM 12/12/2003, Bernard Li wrote:


We are using it for our opteron clusters, it seems to work okay when we're in BIOS or have booted into Linux, but none of the PXE-boot/SIS stuff gets re-directed. It would be handy for OSCAR installations... any ideas?

Thanks,

Bernard

Neil Gorsuch wrote:

We use cyclades on one of our test clusters. I don't remember what
particular models. Jeremy set them up, so he would be better to answer
these types of questions.
On Fri, 2003-12-12 at 12:53, Bernard Li wrote:

Anybody have experience using the Cyclades TS-3000 for terminal re-direction?

Thanks,

Bernard



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