3. Quick Start (disk-less clients).

If you are as impatient as me you will want to start right away, and read the following sections only when you get stuck. This section describes how to get it all working quickly. More details can be found in following sections.

3.1 Setup and configure hardware.

Unpack and assemble all computers (nodes), switches, and all other hardware. You might have to configure BIOS on all of the nodes. If you only have one video card and one keyboard, you'll have to pull each node apart, connect the video card and keyboard, power the node up, and configure the BIOS. The most common settings which need to be configured are IDE hard disks and halt on keyboard and video errors. If your nodes do not have keyboards or video cards, they must not halt when these are not detected by the BIOS. Connect power to all nodes, and Ethernet cables between the nodes and the switch.

3.2 Install OS.

Install Red Hat Linux 5.2 on the server node. Please see section Installing Red Hat Linux. Make sure you leave enough space on the root partition for all the client node NFS-root file systems (up to half a MB per client). Also remember that all of the client nodes will write their logs to server's syslogd server, hence /var/log on the server will require require additional disk space to store client logs as well as its own. /var, /lib, /bin, /sbin, and /etc must NOT be a separate mounts for disk-less client configuration, that is must be installed on the same partition. If you install any of the above on seperate partition, the sdct script used to create NFS-root file system template, will not be able to make appropriate hard links. Make sure all network devices and file systems are supported. You will need RARP (CONFIG_INET_RARP) support for answering RARP requests. RARP is supported in the kernel shipped with Red Hat Linux 5.2 distribution.

3.3 Configure Disk-less Clients.

Run the sdct [section sdct] script on the server to create a template directory (normally /tftpboot/Template). This template will be used for the clients' / file systems. You might have to make few minor modifications to the template (after it is created) to tailor it to your needs. You might even consider altering the script, so you can reproduce the changes easily.

3.4 Create Disk-less client boot floppies.

Compile a NFS-root boot floppy for the clients. The easiest way is to make a monolithic kernel for your clients, making sure NFS, and NFS-root file systems are compiled in (future versions of this HOWTO might describe how to use modular kernels for net-booting). The following options must be set to 'y' : CONFIG_ROOT_NFS, CONFIG_RNFS_BOOTP, CONFIG_RNFS_RARP

Compile the kernel, change its root device NFS-root, and dd it onto a floppy disk.

mknod /dev/nfsroot b 0 255
cd /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot
rdev zImage /dev/nfsroot

When you boot a client using this floppy it will broadcast RARP and BOOTP packets looking for it NFS root server.

3.5 Create File Systems for the Clients.

Run the adcn script on the server to add the new node to the cluster. The easiest way to do it is by:

adcn -i 10.0.0.2 -c node2 -d my.beowulf.domain -l -D eth1