[Beowulf] Re: ECC support on motherboards?

[Lombard, David N]

On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 11:42:01PM -0400, Robert G. Brown wrote:
> On Tue, 20 May 2008, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> >I generally prefer to just bulk install boxes by PXE booting them
> >though -- less handwork. That requires a bit more work, but any SA
> >worth his salt knows how to do that sort of thing.
> 
> I agree that PXE is a powerful tool/methodology for scalable systems
> administration, although that isn't really orthogonal to a suitably
> designed flashdisk-bootable system.

Yes and no.  We have flash-bootable systems--that is, you can install
your own "payload" in flash--and features related to boot device 
selection, e.g., PXE, are no longer available from the minimal BIOS
that initializes the platform and launches your payload.

Instead, you provide whatever boot services are relevant to the
application.  It turns out that providing reasonably general PXE client
services can be provided by Busybox and a shell script in about 380
lines.  Such capability includes using TCP and a highly scalable web-
server for delivery allowing you to get *well* beyond the scaling limits
of even atftp.

-- 
David N. Lombard, Intel, Irvine, CA
I do not speak for Intel Corporation; all comments are strictly my own.