Diskless Crunching

[drezha]

Does anyhow here use diskless crunchers to crunch?
I know a couple over at TPR do and was wondering if you guys did as well.

I made my first step into diskless crunching when I pieced together an old PC I had lying about :cool:

Diskless crunching saves money because one of main user's of energy in a system is the hard drive.
Diskless basically crunches all the data in memory and then sends it back via your server. It's a good way of getting a farm going. Oh and they cost less to run! :D

I've not gone the full hog yet and tried it with linux LTSP servers etc...which would be more nesscerary for BOINC diskless...
but I am crunching Folding diskless! :D

I used this as a guide.
http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/

I'm using a CD generated from the CD generator but with the diskless network boot system installed as well, so I can backup the data in the node's RAM to my main PC. :cool:

Here's it working as well...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v289/drezha/disklessfolder.png

[NeoGen]

There were these guys a long time ago who had a great idea for that. A linux boot cd that instantly started folding@home. The project is still online.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ofdx/

...but most likely all that is way out of date already.

[AMDave]

I have posted previously about my effort to achieve a diskless CPU grid.
I had 2 cracks at LTSP a few months ago but failed due to hardware issues.

I think I now have the hardware to get it done (1 server + 1 node) and may kick of with a raw LTSP install, but I have read some good things about openMosix. I would like to read more about that.

The tricky thing with LTSP is it is easy to achieve with smart terminals (having discs etc) but much harder to do with just the mobo. I have found that 3 mobos that I have are just not compatible for raw PXE connection without eproms. That put me off for a while as the down-time was driving me bonkers, so I got back to crunching. I got the node back up and running as a PC on a 1.2 GB HDD LOLOLOL

I want to do this (either LTSP or openMosix) without disks completely.
Each mobo currently has a CDR though so I will look at your references.

I was dissapointed to find that none of my local PC shops is willing to hand over a single old/used mobo for a grid experiment (ratbags :evil:) so I am no better on hardware than I was before I asked them.

[drezha]

Neogen, this CD does exactly that (except it's not pretty...it's not supposed to be.. ;) ) Disc in drive, startup the PC and it connects to the web, downlaods the folding client, download the core, gets a WU (or if couple with tftpd, it'll look on the server for a prvious state) and then get going on the work.

AMDave, I wanted to do a PXE boot as well but couldn't do it with this mobo I have either. :-(

But this is the second best option I thing. :)