On Sat, 14 Jun 2003 18:32, you wrote: > am I right in saying that compilation requires a lot of disk reads and > writes? Traditionally, the preprocessor sucks in the source code, includes the #include files, and evaluates the #defines and saves the result to disk. The compiler proper then takes in this extended source from disk, converts it to object code and writes the result out to disk. The loader then takes all the object files and links them together to make the executable image, writing it to disk. So yes, there is a lot of disk i/o. However the machines of today have literally billions of bits in the RAM, so it's possible to buffer almost all the intermediate disk i/o so in the o/s buffers. In practice now-a-days, the disk is only touched when the source file is read, the object code written and the loader generates the executable image. Watch your disk activity light one day when you are building an application. The disk light does not flicker anything like as frequently as it used to only a few years ago. The difference between System V in 1986 with 4 Meg RAM and Linux today with nearly 400 Meg RAM is truly remarkable!
> constant nfs stuff may overload the network?? Only experiment will answer the question properly, but I have no qualms or doubts whatsoever as to the value of trying. Needless to say, I hope we will be able in some way to stop and unload the Xserver on the OSTC machines, because they have only 64 Megs physical RAM and, iirc, the Xserver takes up about 8 of them which can't be swapped out. > then again i may be talking crap - it happenned once before. No, not crap, a justifiable concern. > On Sat, 14 > > Jun 2003 17:27:23+1200 Matthew Gregan<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 04:37:37PM +1200, Christopher Sawtell wrote: > > > > Etherboot? > > > > > > Yes, I'm sure it's possible but from a cd or cd image? > > > Remember that it's for one day only, so it's not worth hooting > > > around for weeks. Do you know how? Or would you like to spend the > > > time to find out? > > > > It shouldn't be too difficult. It might be easier with LTSP than the > > Gentoo or Knoppix CDs, since it is gear towards booting effectively > > diskless machines (as we don't want to touch the disks inside these > > OTSC machines). > > > > Configure a DHCP server on a machine, mount the Knoppix or Gentoo Live > > CD on that (or another) machine on the network and export this via > > NFS. > > > > Build an Etherboot floppy that will boot from an NFS mount. Use this > > to boot the OTSC machines from the NFS-exported Knoppix CD. > > > > Of course, it's not quite as simple as outlined above--it does need to > > be tested and there are likely to be a few things that will need to be > > sorted out or at least known about beforehand so they're expected and > > easily worked around. > > > > Once I get a copy of the latest verison of Knoppix, and if I have > > time, I'll throw together a proof of concept to test the process. > > > > Cheers, > > -mjg > > -- > > Matthew Gregan |/ > > /| > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- -- C. S.
