[Beowulf] Re: real hard drive failures

[Jim Lux]

At 09:34 AM 2/1/2005, John Hearns wrote:
>On Mon, 2005-01-31 at 14:14 -0500, Mark Hahn wrote:
> >
> > on that note, though - does anyone have comments about booting
> > machines from flash?
> >
>I've booted a mini-ITX system from flash,
>the distribution in question was a wireless access point.
>All you need is a CF to IDE adapter.
>
>Its common to have firewall distributions, such as ipcop,
>to boot from flash.
>http://www.ipcop.org/1.4.0/en/install/html/mkflash.html
>
>I believe one wrinkle is to either log to a remote host,
>or if you log locally to log to a ramdisk and only write to
>the CF card at infrequent intervals.
>
>John Hearns
>
>ps.
> >sounds like putting mudflaps and a cattle bar on a city-SUV.
>
>Called Chelsea Tractors in the part of the world I live in.
>

I boot mini-ITX systems from flash, and also via PXE, both wireless and wired.
As John says, you need a CF to IDE adapter, which in my case is combined 
with the unregulated 12VDC to ATX power supply, a watchdog timer, and some 
other hardware.


James Lux, P.E.
Spacecraft Radio Frequency Subsystems Group
Flight Communications Systems Section
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mail Stop 161-213
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena CA 91109
tel: (818)354-2075
fax: (818)393-6875