RE: [CentOS] Booting Diskless Workstations
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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Booting Diskless Workstations
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 ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
RE: [CentOS] Booting Diskless Workstations
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. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Booting Diskless Workstations
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 ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
RE: [CentOS] Booting Diskless Workstations
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 ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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 CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
RE: [CentOS] Booting Diskless Workstations
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 ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Booting Diskless Workstations
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). -- rgds Stephen ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
