How do I run a machine without a HDD?
How do I run a machine without a HDD? |
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Message boards : Number crunching : How do I run a machine without a HDD?
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What must I do in order to make a computer run the operating system and BOINC from the system RAM? Which operating system is best suited for such a configuration? And how much RAM is recommended? | |
ID: 730854 ·  | |
What must I do in order to make a computer run the operating system and BOINC from the system RAM? Which operating system is best suited for such a configuration? And how much RAM is recommended? Virtual Machine Software ... Though most want to back the disk up to a actual physical disk... but, there are some that will allow full memory imaging. The other thing to lookk for is disk virtulization ... Best bet would be the Linux world ... ____________ | |
| ID: 730856 · | |
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Another possible solution is to use a compact flash card as a solid state hard drive. There is a discussion about it on the team Seti.USA site. Here is an IDE to CF adapter for about $5.00 With this set up, several people are running without hard drives. | |
| ID: 730967 · | |
What must I do in order to make a computer run the operating system and BOINC from the system RAM? Which operating system is best suited for such a configuration? And how much RAM is recommended? off topic] Apologies. Long time, no see Paul. But good to see you, still trying to get them to RTFM. Andy | |
| ID: 730976 · | |
What must I do in order to make a computer run the operating system and BOINC from the system RAM? Which operating system is best suited for such a configuration? And how much RAM is recommended? Yes....welcome back Paul. Good to see you again, hope you stay for a while. | |
| ID: 730998 · | |
What must I do in order to make a computer run the operating system and BOINC from the system RAM? Which operating system is best suited for such a configuration? And how much RAM is recommended? I use BoincPE... Boots minimal XP installation from USB memory stick, auto launches BOINC, persists data to network share. You can probably get by with as low as 512MB RAM on dual core, 1GB for quad core if you keep your WU cache relatively small. Personally I run 2GB Dual Channel (memory is cheap these days) because I've setup to have 768MB RAM disk. I'd recommend 512MB ramdisk if you run with 1GB RAM. Caveats: It ain't easy to setup, but the info is on the web if you are persistent. Project detatched WUs are commonplace, esp after power failures and can require maintainance by cancelling the detatched WUs else you get 0.0 credits granted for "Received too late to validate" if both wingmen have already reported (Shouldn't be much of a problem if you keep your cache small, ~1 day). WindowsXP licensing might become an issue. FYI: Be sure to shutdown "A43 file manager" after use... there seems to be a memory leak that can be fatal. BOINC On..On... | |
| ID: 731009 · | |
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The answer that hasn't been posted yet..... | |
| ID: 731026 · | |
What must I do in order to make a computer run the operating system and BOINC from the system RAM? Which operating system is best suited for such a configuration? And how much RAM is recommended? NetBooted Macs? If you want to know more PM me. I mentioned Macs, people will shout at me :-) ____________ | |
| ID: 731117 · | |
What must I do in order to make a computer run the operating system and BOINC from the system RAM? Which operating system is best suited for such a configuration? And how much RAM is recommended? You can buy Macs without hard disks? ____________ | |
| ID: 731143 · | |
What must I do in order to make a computer run the operating system and BOINC from the system RAM? Which operating system is best suited for such a configuration? And how much RAM is recommended? Most of us may be PC types, but with Macs pretty much having taken over the top 10 spots, I don't think you need to worry about anyone shouting at you. ____________  | |
| ID: 731186 · | |
What must I do in order to make a computer run the operating system and BOINC from the system RAM? Which operating system is best suited for such a configuration? And how much RAM is recommended? I've got some possibly bad News for the MACs folks then, Once the Uncle B's get done with two more projects that are still under a million each(Spinhenge and Tanpaku). After their done with those two projects, Their leader says He wants to do a Full Scale Frontal Assault on SETI!  In other words possibly the top spot, Or 1st place. ____________ BSG Anthem My Facebook page | |
| ID: 731208 · | |
You can buy Macs without hard disks? Nope, but you can get old ones and boot them from a 'server' Mac using a disk image rather than their internal HDD. Not exactly the solution, but easy to do and it works really rather well, and for this kind of task even over a 100Mb/s network (as long as it's switched). ____________ | |
| ID: 731920 · | |
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I think all macs come with a hard disk, so if you wanted to make a diskless one you'd have to buy it from a 3rd party or make it yourself. But if you have several macs that boot, a high speed lan, and one mac with disks running OSX server (from apple), you are all set to boot over a network. If you have a mac, you can see this by going to system prefs, startup disk and staring at the network boot thingy. You'd have to image a 'example' system first with it's install (macos) disk (cd), which each system would look EXACTLY like and WOULD RETURN TO THAT STATE AFTER EACH RESTART. For this reason, you'd have to run boinc off of thumb drives on the computer or a storage system on the server. If anyone wants more info, I'll pm you a link to the mac os network booting guide. You can also post if you have stones to throw in what I just said. I'm not quite an 'expert' yet, being almost twelve years old..... | |
| ID: 732138 · | |
I think all macs come with a hard disk, so if you wanted to make a diskless one you'd have to buy it from a 3rd party or make it yourself. But if you have several macs that boot, a high speed lan, and one mac with disks running OSX server (from apple), you are all set to boot over a network. If you have a mac, you can see this by going to system prefs, startup disk and staring at the network boot thingy. You'd have to image a 'example' system first with it's install (macos) disk (cd), which each system would look EXACTLY like and WOULD RETURN TO THAT STATE AFTER EACH RESTART. For this reason, you'd have to run boinc off of thumb drives on the computer or a storage system on the server. If anyone wants more info, I'll pm you a link to the mac os network booting guide. You can also post if you have stones to throw in what I just said. I'm not quite an 'expert' yet, being almost twelve years old..... The original poster said "computer without a hard disk" so the original question wasn't limited to the Mac. I know of no practical, economical way to purchase a Mac and not have a hard drive. Setting aside the Macintosh for a moment..... PXE can deliver enough info to each machine (either through the boot images or by some other means) that each can log into the server with different shares. Each share on the server can hold a unique installation of BOINC. Since BOINC keeps track of progress directly, and each installation is separate (i.e. each has a separate instance of BOINC) nothing else is needed. A thumb-drive might be nice, it might be handy, but it's not needed. Takes a bit to get that first one to work, but from there it's a piece of cake. ____________ | |
| ID: 732243 · | |
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[edit] Lordy, I didn't realise how long this post was, sorry! [/edit]
Firstly you need a server that can handle the task: Fast Disks, As much RAM as you can throw at it, as decent a processor as you can lay your hands on and preferably a Gigabit Network. Then you need to have a Disk Image of a pre-configured OS to push out to the client and a few other bits (Information from DHCP, kernels, boot loaders and what have you. Mostly stuff automatically generated by the solution you use).
It depends on your area of expertise/what you're looking for. Mac OS X Desktop / Server is going to be the easiest and mid-priced (from a software point of view) , Linux/Unix the hardest/most technical but cheapest and probably least resource hungry and Windows the most generic and probably the most expensive. With the Mac OS X solution your stumbling block is going to be getting the Mac hardware, so if you only have generic PC hardware to hand, forget it. As for RAM: How much have you got/can you get? Get more! As with most things server you'll benefit from as much RAM as you can throw at it. I'd say that 2GB is a good starting point. For the clients I'd say 1GB is probably the minimum I'd go for, though most NetBoot solutions will work with as little as 256MB. The more RAM you put in the clients the less virtual memory they have to do over the network.
Oh no, not at all! NetBoot solutions have the ability to write what are known as 'shadow files' over the network back to the server. They have to to be able to handle virtual memory. While these shadow files are usually destroyed when the client reboots there are ways of keeping them. Though what most people do is to have a standard sharepoint mounted on the netboot client (AFP, SMB, NFS etc.) where the critical data gets written (e.g. SETI work in progress). Voila, no loss of data. Just remember that all these solutions rely on a quite powerful machine as a server in terms of disk size/speed and RAM mainly, but to an extent Processor and Network Speed too. I certainly would recommend an absolute minimum of a 100Mb/s switched network. A 10 Mb/s switched network will be far too slow and using a 10Mb/s hub? Forget it! Not only that but they do tend to need a bit of loving care in planning and execution. They pretty all rely on a reasonable understanding of DHCP and DNS too. So if you plan and experiment first then the final product tends to work a lot better. And I just thought of another solution. Knoppix. I'm sure you could build a Knoppix LiveCD with everything you need on it. Interesting, why didn't I think of that before? That's probably the actual answer you were looking for *lol* Everything I've said about client systems applies to this solution too. Anyway... If anyone actually does want help in setting up a Mac OS X NetBoot solution for anything, not just a SETI farm then let me know. I've been doing things like that for a living for about 15 years. :-) ____________ | |
| ID: 732625 · | |
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I do not think you can get a new mac w/o a hard disk ... you MAY be able to get a used one that way ... | |
| ID: 732645 · | |
However, I am not clear on the reason you want to go diskless. If you take This thread along with this thread, I think it starts to make sense. If you wanted 100 cores crunching, you could buy 25 systems: 25 cases, power supplies, disks, motherboards, CPUs, memory, etc. You could also build one server, then set up 25 motherboards with CPU and RAM to boot off of the network -- saving the cost of 25 cases, disks, and their power consumption. I'm not sure the server would have to be a "great" server, it isn't doing anything but file serving. It could probably run BOINC on top of everything else. The OS on each machine would not have to write back to the server that often, because we're really only interested in the science application checkpoints. If we reboot we lose the work done between checkpoints. That's settable, you can double the interval between checkpoints and halve the LAN traffic. Most of the "wisdom of the net" seems to talk about doing this with LINUX, so that's what I'd try if I was serious. ____________ | |
| ID: 732737 · | |
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All good comments... However, I am not clear on the reason you want to go diskless. To give quite a big saving on cost, space, and power. I'm not sure the server would have to be a "great" server, it isn't doing anything but file serving. It could probably run BOINC on top of everything else. If you're patient for a slow boot-up, then just any old machine with a HDD would do! Just make sure it is reliable enough. The OS on each machine would not have to write back to the server that often, because we're really only interested in the science application checkpoints. If we reboot we lose the work done between checkpoints. Just ensure that each diskless machine has enough RAM to avoid needing to swap memory to the server too often. RAM is cheap so it is silly to sacrifice performance by having too little RAM. Then again, too much RAM is completely wasted. So best is to put in just what is conveniently just 'enough'. Most of the "wisdom of the net" seems to talk about doing this with LINUX, so that's what I'd try if I was serious. It's already been done, in various ways, and for a long time now... The hardest part is in finding a nice "Howto" to talk you through the steps. You could also add Boinc to an existing standard LTSP linux setup... Anyone doing this already? Good luck, Martin ____________ Mandriva Linux A user friendly OS! See new freedom Mageia2 The Future is what We make IT (GPLv3) | |
| ID: 732875 · | |
The hardest part is in finding a nice "Howto" to talk you through the steps. Well, once you have done it, you can take your notes and add them to the UBW and the next person can improve upon your work ... There is a How-To section to put your work .... ____________ | |
| ID: 732954 · | |
Message boards : Number crunching : How do I run a machine without a HDD?
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