[CentOS] alternative to rocks cluster

[bgschaid_lists at ice-sf.at]

>>>>> On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:42:33 +0000
>>>>> "TB" == Tom Brown <tom at ng23.net> wrote:

    TB> in rocks when you run the shoot-node command it reboots the
    TB> box to PXE, even if PXE is not first in the boot order it
    TB> seems, does anyone know how that is achieved? Is it in the
    TB> grub config and if so how?

There is a pseudo-service rocks-grub installed on every rocks-node. When
the node boots it sets the grub-configuration in such a way that grub
will call pxe-boot. At the end of a regular shutdown it resets the
grub-configuration to the regular harddisk-boot. That way every time
something bad happens to the node (in other words: was not shutdown
regularily) the node 'boots' by PXE (and is reinstalled).

The bottom line is that the BIOS-Bootorder does not get changed (the
node always boots from harddisk, just into different configurations) 

    >>
    >>> Back to the original poster, are you looking for a way to
    >>> rebuild the nodes automatically, remotely, and completely
    >>> hands off, or just merely to rebuild them quickly?  I only
    >>> deal with a couple of dozen nodes (not hundreds), and using
    >>> kickstart and storing the config files on the server allows me
    >>> to rebuild a node in about 15 minutes, of which only the first
    >>> minute or two requires my attention and physical presence.  I
    >>> wrote a simple Perl script that generates the kickstart file
    >>> for each node.
    >> thanks for the reply's - the main issue i have is that when i
    >> build a new box currently my kix has to go something like
    >> ./addnewbox 'mac-yada-yada-yada' <hostname> <ip> <image name>
    >> then walk away - yes i know thats not that hard and requires
    >> minimum effort - I do however have to find mac's out first etc
    >> which on a lot of boxes at once can be a pain.  i like the idea
    >> in rocks to be able to go next mac you see install with x image
    >> so that i can just power up the boxes in order.  I guess id'd
    >> also like to be able to select a bunch of already running boxes
    >> and have them rebuild to where they were last install just like
    >> rocks can also do so i guess i'm after a mix of what i have now
    >> and some features that rocks has. I would also like to be able
    >> to force a pix boot next reboot just like the 'shoot-node'
    >> command in rocks but i dont seem to be able to figure out how
    >> that works!!  thanks
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