these ultrasparc 5s are really toys now and cannot really cough up that much processing cycles. but, i would presume that you are doing it for the educational value (learning how to do it and at the same time getting the satisfaction of completing it).
actually, not just for the joy of being able to install and configure linux on an UltraSPARC 5, but more for being able to do my study on different systems and setups of Beowulf clusters.
if it were not for my thesis, this couldn't have been possible now. although i would still love to have one of those UltraSPARCs at home... ;)
my solution to this problem would be to configuration an regular Lintel
server (use your distribution of choice). configure TFTP, BOOTP/DHCP. build
a SPARC filesystem image (with the usual suspects MOSIX, SSH, LAM/MPI, PVM
and others -note that these must be SPARC binaries) and save it on the TFTP server. another variation of this would be to only place a kernel on the TFTP server and this mounts a filesystem over NFS.
configure the SPARCs to retrieve their IPs from the network. there are a number of ways for doing this. my experience is only with JavaStations so i use PROWL to do this (which is configured by default).
i've seen a similar solution on the net, and this seems like a viable and practical solution. this i will consider too, when booting slave nodes maybe using floppy disks that got the system from the master node. this is really still, under scrutiny as i explore the many options i have to be able to pull it off neatly.
as for now, part of my goals (in my thesis) is to come up with a live CD based distro for setting up clusters "on-the-fly". certainly the above mentioned solution is a very practical and feasible alternative. :)
and you have an instant mini-beowulf cluster.
which is exactly one of my goals in the study. :)
thanks for the insights! :)
as for side notes, are there any issues i have to address explicitly when i am going to base a distribution on another distribution? Debian for instance? what are the necessary steps to properly accomplish this task?
any sort of insight would be very much appreciated.
TIA -- -=[mikhail]=-
aka Dean Michael C. Berris home +63 49 5680142 work +63 49 5680024 http://free.net.ph/Members/mikhailberis pgp key ID = 0xF9501761
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