Re: [gentoo-cluster] Gentoo clustering "à la" www.clustermatic.org (PXE booted nodes)

[Eric Thibodeau]

Le 17 Novembre 2005 09:30, Donnie Berkholz a écrit :
> I set up an NFS-root, PXE-boot cluster about a year ago. I can try to
> put my notes together into something usable as a doc, if you'd like.

I am definately interested in any documentation/pointers that could help
me get a PXE bootable Gentoo root going.

> The basic idea I used was to maintain a couple of ROOT=/foo environments
> on the master server: one for the NFS root, and one smaller one with
> just busybox and a kernel to create an initrd for each node.

The way I see it, multiple Gentoo roots would be available (different
machine profiles/optimisation) and they would be specified in the DHCP server's
config file as simply as any PXE entry.... So I am not too sure I
understand your "couple of ROOT=/foo" _and_ the busybox one...

> The ROOT approach is far superior to what's promoted in the NFS root
> Gentoo doc, because it allows for a maintainable and differentiated node
> system rather than just copying straight from the master's root fs.

Didn't know/find such a document specific to Gentoo!....Google to the
rescue, I skipped through http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/diskless-howto.xml
and I agree that the copying of the master's environment is definately not
the approach I would take. But, from what I read, it should be fairly easy
to modify the procedure simply to point to a root that is an independant
Gentoo tree, into which we can chroot (...limited to compatible arches of
course...) and manage the installed packages from there (portage tree
could be loop-mounted to avoid duplicating it).

Thanks for the info, I'll read the diskless-howto (I presently run LTSP)
and see how well it applies.

Eric Thibodeau

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