Ok guys I've been thinking about doing this for awhile and since I finally got the bug to crunch Seti again I really REALLY got the bug. Either way I have my gaming machine (e8400, 8800GTS) and my laptop (P4 3.0 HT) crunching some numbers. Then I got to looking at some wonderful farm setups.

So obviously I now have extra machines collecting dust and I really though it would be cool, yeah I'm a geek, to have my own seti farm.

The two extra system I know I would swap over for the farm is an Athlon 2800+ w/2Gb of DDr400 ram and an AMD FX-60 Dual Core with 2Gb of DDr800. What would be the most effective way to set this up?

What I'm aiming for is effective use of the cpu cycles so I would really like to have them setup as headless units, possibly linux (I know nothing about linux but am willing to learn) and I do not have a KVM switch. I know about RDP and VNC solutions for that.

The motherboards for both of those system are MSI motherboards both of them being nVidia chipsets, no onboard video on either system. I can get specifics if that would help you guys help me.

I guess the basic thing I'm asking here is what would be better for a headless system. Windows or Linux, I'm looking for simplicity and something that just works. Something I won't really have the need to monitor continuiously just periodically.

Also once you get a system like this setup how can you monitor it without looking at the stats from the seti site? Is there a network type monitor? Either way give me some feedback I got a weekend coming up here that should prove to be very nice in setting this system up, or at least getting started!

Thanks NCers!
(I know I've been here since 99 with only two posts and a low number or credits/WU's done but before I had lacking machines and hobbies have changed and I'm ready to knock down some numbers now!)

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

If you want to have things running all the time I would suggest use Linux. I use Ubuntu 8.04 for one year now and it never let me down. I was also new at Linux and slowly I get the hang of it. When using the graphical interface it is not that much difference with Windows.
When you do have a KVM switch there is no need for remote desktop or VNC or whatever.
Just install the OS, download and install Boinc and Seti (use optimized apps for your your processor, look in the threads on top of the list). Use one account name for all computers and you're done.
When using the KVM switch you can periodically check on the servers. They can also be monitored on your own Boinc webpage. That is if they are still crunching and producing results.
What is important is the cooling of the systems. Make sure that when a computer is crunching for some time temps are still okay. When placing several computers close together they will exhaust warm air, thus heating up the room and therefore heating up eachother. Keep that in mind, check it regularly and you should be okay.
Have fun.

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DeMus

I cant help you much but I will share my experiences with setting up my own small stack.

I initially started off with two rigs, which I wanted to be headless and diskless with linux (Ubuntu 8.10 64bit). Headless is easy, once you set up the rigs, disble the error reporting for keyboard in bios. I settled for headless rigs, each of them has independant hard drives, which unfortunately increases the power consumption and also the heat. I got no luck getting it diskless and I have absolutely no idea how to do it and really no working knowledge of linux.

In order to control them, you can use TightVNC which is a freeware. However, it doesnt support Vista. RealVNC supports most of the OS but will cost $30 per system. I use TightVNC.
To monitor the temperatures, I use Speedfan
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I cant help you much but I will share my experiences with setting up my own small stack.

I initially started off with two rigs, which I wanted to be headless and diskless with linux (Ubuntu 8.10 64bit). Headless is easy, once you set up the rigs, disble the error reporting for keyboard in bios. I settled for headless rigs, each of them has independant hard drives, which unfortunately increases the power consumption and also the heat. I got no luck getting it diskless and I have absolutely no idea how to do it and really no working knowledge of linux.

In order to control them, you can use TightVNC which is a freeware. However, it doesnt support Vista. RealVNC supports most of the OS but will cost $30 per system. I use TightVNC.
To monitor the temperatures, I use Speedfan

One small question: you use Ubuntu on your computers and you control them temps with Speedfan? How do you do that? Speedfan is a Windows program and in my computer I can not get it to work using Wine. It does start but shows me nothing what so ever.
How do you do that?

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DeMus

One small question: you use Ubuntu on your computers and you control them temps with Speedfan?

Sorry, my mistake. I failed to mention that since I was not able to setup a Linux diskless stack, I reverted to windows. As I stated earlier, I am not good in Linux. Only know to install it and play few games :)
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Ok guys I've been thinking about doing this for awhile and since I finally got the bug to crunch Seti again I really REALLY got the bug. Either way I have my gaming machine (e8400, 8800GTS) and my laptop (P4 3.0 HT) crunching some numbers. Then I got to looking at some wonderful farm setups.

So obviously I now have extra machines collecting dust and I really though it would be cool, yeah I'm a geek, to have my own seti farm.

The two extra system I know I would swap over for the farm is an Athlon 2800+ w/2Gb of DDr400 ram and an AMD FX-60 Dual Core with 2Gb of DDr800. What would be the most effective way to set this up?

What I'm aiming for is effective use of the cpu cycles so I would really like to have them setup as headless units, possibly linux (I know nothing about linux but am willing to learn) and I do not have a KVM switch. I know about RDP and VNC solutions for that.

The motherboards for both of those system are MSI motherboards both of them being nVidia chipsets, no onboard video on either system. I can get specifics if that would help you guys help me.

I guess the basic thing I'm asking here is what would be better for a headless system. Windows or Linux, I'm looking for simplicity and something that just works. Something I won't really have the need to monitor continuiously just periodically.

Also once you get a system like this setup how can you monitor it without looking at the stats from the seti site? Is there a network type monitor? Either way give me some feedback I got a weekend coming up here that should prove to be very nice in setting this system up, or at least getting started!

Thanks NCers!
(I know I've been here since 99 with only two posts and a low number or credits/WU's done but before I had lacking machines and hobbies have changed and I'm ready to knock down some numbers now!)

Well I have a small farm of (currently) 5 crunchers. I bought a couple of dedicated quaddies and liked them so much I got another 3 :-)

As a general rule AMD's aren't as quick as Intel machines. Also laptops have issues with cooling.

I'm a windows guy and know zilch about linux so they are all XP boxes. Networked them all and use a 4 port KVM. Usually I control them via BOINCview, but sometimes you need to see what the box is saying, apply patches, etc. If you want to see the farm have a look at my blog.

Currently i'm looking at putting video cards in them all so they can do cuda work as well. After that the next project will probably be to reuse a KFSN4 that I managed to kill while assembling it, and then killed the replacement one as well.

MarkJ

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BOINC blog

When the Seti bug first bit me (I am still suffering from Seti Fever), I did a lot of searching on the net and this site with Seti Stacks grabbed my attention. There is also a Linux Seti page which you might find interesting. I havent used any of the files provided though.
I personally like the way this stack is set up.

Edit 1: After a bit more rummaging, I found the following three links in my bookmarks -
Setting up a Cluster (diskless)
Setting Up a Seti Farm
How to install Seti on Linux - A newbie approach - Part 2

Edit 2: Few more links that I found. Although they are not related to S@H, the principle is the same. Atleast they are very interesting to read :)
Building a Folding Farm
Diskless Ubuntu Howto
A linux cluster in a IKEA Helmer cabinet
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I am working on a diskless/USB Linux distribtution in the moment.

The goal is to make a Linux distribution for BOINC which easyly installs and boot from a USB stick, harddisk and from diskless clients and also has some interfaces to setup the diskless server and the clients automaticly.

Also the memory and disk space should be small. In the moment, the OS requires about 64 MB plus the memory for the BOINC and SETI application. So 128 MB would be enought for crunching SETI...
In the moment the distribution fits on a 1 GB USB stick, but 2 GB would be good for multi BOINC project crunching. The HDD installation is about 2 GB, and the diskless server requries 1,5 GB plus 1,5 GB for each diskless client.

The USB stick and hardisk part is ready, in the moment I am working on the diskless client and server part.
I hope that I have a first beta available in one or two weeks. - Is anybody interested in tesing it ?

The USB stick and hardisk part is ready, in the moment I am working on the diskless client and server part.
I hope that I have a first beta available in one or two weeks. - Is anybody interested in tesing it ?

My uni-core rig just ran out of work units. I was planning to try ubuntu on it anyway, so ya, I am very much interested in testing it. However, since I am a Linux rookie, I am afraid, you will have to give me step by step instructions.
Still trying to upload the completed work units, after which I might try Ubuntu 8.10 on it.
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Thanks everyone for your help. I do know I'm leaning more and more towards linux for this project. As of right now I am adding up the sum of my parts so I can tell exactly what I'll get outta the towers I got now. Gotta love old game machines.

Anyways, I was aware of the headless/linux combo and heating issues, but I would like to thank Vipin Palazhi for the links, and Mark for the link to his blog. I'll make sure I read up on both.

Does anyone have a good grasp on this LRP seti setup that can give feedback on the advantages vs. disadvantages of a diskless system? How is the speed of the operations while diskless? I believe everything is loaded into memory anyways right?

Thanks for all the feedback guys! Now back to crunching!

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

My uni-core rig just ran out of work units. I was planning to try ubuntu on it anyway, so ya, I am very much interested in testing it. However, since I am a Linux rookie, I am afraid, you will have to give me step by step instructions.
Still trying to upload the completed work units, after which I might try Ubuntu 8.10 on it.

My Linux Distribution is based on Ubuntu and also packages can be installed by synaptics. It will also includes setup howto's and a documentation...
Btw. what do you plan to install USB, HDD or Diskless over Network ?

Does anyone have a good grasp on this LRP seti setup that can give feedback on the advantages vs. disadvantages of a diskless system? How is the speed of the operations while diskless? I believe everything is loaded into memory anyways right?

I think that the biggest disadvantage at a diskless client which has booted over network, has problems when the server hang. A 100 MBit Network would be enought performance for a BOINC diskless client, because the BOINC science application do very less IO.

The USB Stick has the disadvantage that the USB stick has a limited number of write cycles. So backups of the data should be made. The IO perfomance of a USB stick is also lower than on a diskless client over network, but made no problems in my tests.

My Distribution has the complete filesystem for the client on the server or USB stick stored, including data. So there is no data loss, when the diskcless client crashs or reboots.

Well I have some spare 7200RPM Western Digitals in both SATA and IDE, looking to try an setup a disk'ed system first and after some research and testing implement a diskless system later.

Is uBuntu considered the optimized linux of sorts? Or is something else favored by the Seti crowd at large? I know with windows basically anything based off the NT kernal is warrented, specifically windows 2000/XP/2003/2008. What about linux?

With Linux running in commandline and headless I would assume it would run more effeciently than a Windows Headless box? Thanks for the help guys this incite on this is helping me 100x over!

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

If you don't want to go the linux route...

Check up on WinPE. It's a windows based bare-bones setup that can do similar things.

You do know that linux only is free if your time is worthless rigt? ;)

Seriously though. I tried both and both have their advantages. Linux was harder for me at least. I had the most trougle making the PXE boot working.

Have to say it though...i discovered old systems were just too inproductive (for me). I'd probably draw the low-end line at dual-core Athlons...

/Anton

Is uBuntu considered the optimized linux of sorts? Or is something else favored by the Seti crowd at large? I know with windows basically anything based off the NT kernal is warrented, specifically windows 2000/XP/2003/2008. What about linux?

Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. It's stable, thought for easy use (beginners) and very good documentated.

With Linux running in commandline and headless I would assume it would run more effeciently than a Windows Headless box? Thanks for the help guys this incite on this is helping me 100x over!

I've striped down ubuntu, and disabled all not needed stuff. So you can save about 100..200 MB memory for the graphical desktop. But for Beginners, it would also posible to choose the graphical desktop. In text based it would use about 50..64 MB for the OS to run compfortable, plus about 10 MB for BOINC and about 32..80 MB for a SETI WU per core.
Don't know what the graphical stuff at Windows would use. But I think it would be more efficent and flexible like Windows.

I tried both and both have their advantages. Linux was harder for me at least. I had the most trougle making the PXE boot working.

This is excatly the point, why I try to automate the diskless server and client installation process via scripts....

My Linux Distribution is based on Ubuntu and also packages can be installed by synaptics. It will also includes setup howto's and a documentation...
Btw. what do you plan to install USB, HDD or Diskless over Network ?

At the moment, I have a 20GB HDD that can be used. I do not plan to use a flash drive for the same reason that you mentioned - not high enough write cycles. Once I am comfortable enough with this, I will look into a diskless setup.

BTW, my plans of installing Ubuntu were thwarted last night as I forgot to set no new tasks and the rig downloaded a big bunch of work units. I dont want to abort them, so I guess another week of crunching before the cache is empty. Anyway, you did mention that you file will be ready in a week or so...
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I run SuSE Enterprise Server 10 64-bit on my two Linux crunchers. Runlevel 3 (multi-user, networking, no GUI) works great. Just use PuTTY for communications, and I set up a SMB share so that I could easily move files around.

They are complete systems with a KVM, but I hardly ever go in that room physically. I just remote into those machines to check on them. Without using something like BOINCView, I just use the regular Manager and connect to those two hosts from my main cruncher. SSH works great for all the command-line stuff.

And no, I don't notice any kind of significant difference in crunching performance with Linux v. Windows. I never had Windows on those machines, so I don't have a baseline to compare to. :p

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Ok I think after looking around a bit one box will have to stay with Windows of some flavor, unless I put uBunto on because it is my pvr box, so it will be a small cruncher anyways.

I know a little bit more is better than nothing but is a dual core FX-60 and Anthlon 4000+ and a 2800+ single core worth putting up? Would the power bill versus extra work units make sense? Cause it wouldn't make a lot of sense to put up a box that take days to take care of a MB WU. I do believe I will be sticking with Windows on the one box, and probably after searching a lot optimised windows system, because that what I'm used too.

The reason I ask this is hopefully sometime in the not to distant future my e8400 will be retired for an i7.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

Personally I like the KISS principle, and stick to what I know.

I know Windows pretty well, so it's simple to pop in any old hard disk, load up Win2K for single cores, or XP for Multicores and just Administer them via VNC or RDP.

A diskless remote boot linux system has a certain sweetness about it, but it's a bit of a learning curve for me, so I work with what I Have/Know.

Crunching needs CPU power, graphics cards, big fast disks, fast lan, heaps of ram - doesn't really help. You just need to keep that CPU running with 99% of it's time devoted to Crunching.

Cheers

Ian