Hello again everyone ... here's what I've got.
 
I started from scratch, reinstalled RedHat 7.3 on the Master node and all the clients.  Our (hopefully soon-to-be) cluster consists of one single processor box for the Master node and seven dual-processor boxes for the compute nodes.  I'm running the smp kernel on the Master node to avoid compatibility issues.  There's one important note, however:
 
I had to compile some drivers provided by Intel to get support for the on-board network cards.  The drivers were installed in the usual manner with an "insmod" command.  Everything seemed to work fine.  The MAC collection worked without error as did the creation of the autoinstall boot floppy.
 
When I reboot the nodes with the boot floppy everything seems to proceed normally.  I can watch the network traffic come over from the Master node and all the files appear to be installed.  However, when I remove the boot floppy and reboot the node, I get the following messages:  (Does anyone know a way to scroll back and read the lines that have scrolled passed?  I've tried the Ctrl-PageUp and Ctrl-B, but neither seems to work.)
 
<long list of unresolved symbol errors regarding mptscsi.o>
ERROR: /bin/insmod exited abnormally!
mounting /proc filesystem
Creating root device
Mounting root filesystem
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k block-major-8, errno = 2
mount: error 6 mounting ext2
pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
Freeing unused kernel memory: 384k freed
Kernel panic: No init found.  Try passing init= option to kernel.
 
<the system hangs here>
 
What's curious to me about this is that the same SCSI controller is in each of the machines, however the problem seems to be that the drivers for the SCSI controller are never loaded upon reboot after network installation.
 
Should I create my network install image on one of the client nodes and port this to the Master node?  If so, what set of RPMs do I need to include in my client installation?  Also, has anyone done this before?
 
Thanks for all of your help.
 
Tony

 

__________________________________________________________________________
Antonio M. Ferreira, Ph.D.              "He who will not risk cannot win."
Department of Chemistry
The University of Memphis                                - John Paul Jones
J.M. Smith Chemistry Building
3744 Walker Avenue
Memphis, Tennessee 38152                 I must go down to the seas again,
                                         to the lonely sea and the sky.
                                         And all I ask is a tall ship
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]           and a star to steer her by.
Phone : (901) 678-2630
Fax : (901) 678-3447                                      - John Masefield
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Computational Research on Materials Institute at the University of Memphis

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