Mark Weinstein mark@dotcomlive.net writes:
Eric,
Can you help me? I was reading an article about the LinuxBIOS and had a few questions. Your name was at the bottom of the article, so I thought I would drop you a line. I hope you don¹t mind and if you do, please disregard this message. :) Bear with me here... I am new to the whole LinuxBIOS thing and am having a hard time trying to find answers.
Asking on the LinuxBIOS list is probably the best way, questions and some answers forwarded there.
- I use Linux boxes in a clustering environment and would LOVE to have the
nodes boot themselves without having to load images from the network, etc. Is this doable?
Personally I think booting from a local hard driver is a less manageable way to do things. I have booted a 1000 node cluster over the network in under a minute.
But there is support for booting from a hard drive.
- I use a RedHat 2.4.18 based kernel with quite a few kernel mods. How
much space is on the DOC (is it 8mb?) and will the OS fit on it?
The DOC has 8MByte of space, yes. I don't use it and I don't see the need you can load a kernel from other places. And in fact I consider it a poor choice for any but an embedded user to hard code their kernel, into the ROM.
- If the answer to #2 is yes, then can you reflash the chips from a server
or some other machine and then have them reboot without taking the machines apart each time?
Yes. Though I try and keep reflashing down to just BIOS upgrades and not kernel upgrades.
- If you can coot the OS from he chip, how do you have access to all of
your libraries, etc? Would you simply mount SOME file shares with libraries and apps via NFS?
I am VERY interested in building some servers with LinuxBIOS, but I am also very confused. :) Any help you can give me would be GREATLY appreciated!
Talk to the other people on the list. I have provided the answers I can, but you are coming from an extremely different perspective than I am.
Eric