On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 23:19:32 -0000, (Gary Heston)
wrote:

Greetings;

I'm in the process of rebuilding my farm, which I plan to set
up with all the dedicated crunchers having no local drives at all, simply booting from a server. This approach requires creating
a ramdisk to use as the root Linux filesystem.

I've found a good article on doing this at:

    http://frank.harvard/edu/~/coldwell

and plan to model my setup on this. One of the issues that he mentions
is memory usage; there needs to be a minimum of 64MB for the root
filesystem, plus some for the application (BOINC and S@h in this case)
and whatever workspace the application needs.

So, if anyone can tell me what the total memory requirement for the
Linux kernel, BOINC, S@h, and workspace is, I can start getting the
extra memory together and install it as I prep each of the nodes.

f/fgeorge wrote:
> Boinc requires 64 meg of ram free AFTER the OS loads, not counting
> space for the workunits.


There are various Linux distros that are specially cut down to run in just a (small) few MBytes. Most "live cd distros" require 128MB min for a fully working diskless system with workspace spare for the applications. (Aside: Ubuntu can run its installer in just 64MB.)

s@h specifies 64MB min, presumably for the screensaver stuff.
s@h-enhanced will run in a lot less than 64MB.

And you can set up remote mounts for the Linux filesystem. This is often done for systems that have just a few MB of RAM. You just need to get a kernel (1 MB or so) image in there to boot, and then mount the filesystem off your central server HDD.


Depending on what you find or how much hacking you want to do, you could squeeze it all in 64MB but considering the cost of RAM and likely future Boinc projects, putting in 128MB looks to be a /lot/ easier!


Let us know how you get on. I'm sure there's some Linux hackers over in Ars Technica (sp?) that could help.

Good luck,
Martin