scyld scsi support

[Mitch Germansky]

daniel,

thx much for getting back in touch.

we wanted to use scsi for the master.  we got around this by installing an IDE
drive.  what you explained below is how we dealt with the slave nodes.  but it
didn't appear that there was a way to install the master on scsi off of the
scyld cdrom.  tell me otherwise.

thx for your help!
--mitch

Daniel Ridge wrote:

> Mitch,
>
> > just about to get started with scyld cluster (once i receive the cdrom
> > from linuxcentral).
> > recommended hardware lists IDE, but no SCSI.
> >
> > is SCSI supported for the boot disk?
>
> SCSI usually works just fine with the Scyld Beowulf software -- although
> the level of 'support' provided with the $2.00 CD is 'label side up'.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by the 'boot disk'. If you mean the CD as
> used to install the master, then yes. If you mean the CD (or node floppy)
> as used to boot the nodes, then sort-of.
>
> The Scyld node boot process has a number of different phases that come
> into play here. The first kernel we boot doesn't know anything about SCSI
> -- cheer up -- it doesn't know anything about IDE either. All it knows how
> to do is grab a kernel over the network and jump to it (via 2-kernel
> monte).
>
> The second-phase kernel can (and by default does) support SCSI. You can
> also use tools like 'insmod' and 'modprobe' to plug new modules into node
> kernels after your nodes are up. Under scyld, 'insmod' and 'modprobe' take
> the additional argument '--node <num>' and use this as a target kernel to
> insert modules into.
>
> Regards,
>         Dan Ridge
>         Scyld Computing Corporation