> 1. Should I just do iSCSI backed diskless setups? Probably doesn't scale well.

What's wrong with NFS? You can even have root on NFS these days
A quick google found:
http://www.digitalpeer.com/id/linuxnfs

My first thought:
Install a workstation as normal, then tar/untar them onto the NFS server.
With some correct seperation of files you should be able to share most
of the filesystem between machines (eg /usr could be readonly). You
might even be able to make root readonly, but I've never tried that.

--

rgds
Stephen
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>What's wrong with NFS? You can even have root on NFS these days
>A quick google found:
> http://www.digitalpeer.com/id/linuxnfs

Nothing actually, just no experience with it. What is the performance like of NFS?
Given good hardware, does this make for a production quality setup?
Thanks!
jlc
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On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 03:47:04PM -0600, Joseph L. Casale wrote:
> >What's wrong with NFS? You can even have root on NFS these days
> >A quick google found:
> > http://www.digitalpeer.com/id/linuxnfs
>
> Nothing actually, just no experience with it. What is the performance like of NFS?
> Given good hardware, does this make for a production quality setup?

NFS is the traditional diskless workstation method, as used by Sun for
the past 2 or 3 decades. The efficacy of it is very dependent on what
you're doing. Web browsing, reading email, running the odd program;
people won't notice. High I/O intensive applications... not suited for
diskless in the first place! The key is mostly sufficient memory so
that the machine doesn't swap and can keep commonly accessed programs
in I/O cache.

--

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Stephen
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>The key is mostly sufficient memory so
>that the machine doesn't swap and can keep commonly accessed programs
>in I/O cache.

If the clients had lots of ram (>=2Gb), can I disable the swap file altogether?
Thanks!
jlc

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On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 08:17:20PM -0600, Joseph L. Casale wrote:
> >The key is mostly sufficient memory so
> >that the machine doesn't swap and can keep commonly accessed programs
> >in I/O cache.
>
> If the clients had lots of ram (>=2Gb), can I disable the swap file altogether?

Yup! (That's also true for diskful machines).

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Stephen
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Something just occured to me on this this...

Suppose I have an old Amd 486DX2/40, could this oldie be setup so that it
boots a minimal (blocky) GUI over NFS to be able to run xmms or something like
that? Has anybody tried (something similar like) this?


-----Original Message-----
From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf
Of Stephen Harris
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 4:05 AM
To: CentOS mailing list
Subject: Re: [CentOS] Booting Diskless Workstations

On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 03:47:04PM -0600, Joseph L. Casale wrote:
> >What's wrong with NFS? You can even have root on NFS these days
> >A quick google found:
> > http://www.digitalpeer.com/id/linuxnfs
>
> Nothing actually, just no experience with it. What is the performance like
of NFS?
> Given good hardware, does this make for a production quality setup?

NFS is the traditional diskless workstation method, as used by Sun for
the past 2 or 3 decades. The efficacy of it is very dependent on what
you're doing. Web browsing, reading email, running the odd program;
people won't notice. High I/O intensive applications... not suited for
diskless in the first place! The key is mostly sufficient memory so
that the machine doesn't swap and can keep commonly accessed programs
in I/O cache.

--

rgds
Stephen
_______________________________________________
CentOS mailing list
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http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
_______________________________________________
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Sorin Srbu wrote:

Something just occured to me on this this...

Suppose I have an old Amd 486DX2/40, could this oldie be setup so that it
boots a minimal (blocky) GUI over NFS to be able to run xmms or something like
that? Has anybody tried (something similar like) this?



how much ram? I don't think I'd bother if its less than about 128MB.

fwiw, a newer distro with a i686 only kernel won't work, that requires
pentium pro or better

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John R Pierce <> scribbled on Tuesday, June 03, 2008 9:40 AM:

> Sorin Srbu wrote:
>> Something just occured to me on this this...
>>
>> Suppose I have an old Amd 486DX2/40, could this oldie be setup so that it
>> boots a minimal (blocky) GUI over NFS to be able to run xmms or something
>> like that? Has anybody tried (something similar like) this?
>>
>
> how much ram? I don't think I'd bother if its less than about 128MB.

Probably around 30ish. Don't think the 486-generation machines could handle
much more than that.

> fwiw, a newer distro with a i686 only kernel won't work, that requires
> pentium pro or better

Sounds good! I have a Ppro/180 (overclocked to 200MHz) too.

What about players? Xmmx is graphical and I'm not familiar with CLI or
block-graphics players others than those that were big with OS/2 Warp 3 and 4
more than a decade ago.

TIA.
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