[Beowulf] PXEBoot struggling

[Lux, Jim (337C)]

On the other hand, there is some value in thrashing your way through it manually the first time, especially with a small cluster like Duke is putting together. 
I'm a huge fan of automation and tools, in general, but... when it breaks, you have no clue what's wrong.

You can think of it as a week's worth of lab classes in cluster admin.

(I went through a similar set of hassles trying to PXEboot a 4 node cluster over a wireless LAN..  It took me two weeks to figure it all out, but, boy, did I know a LOT more about Debian, NFS mounts,  and how the boot process worked after that.  )

Jim Lux

-----Original Message-----
From: beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org] On Behalf Of Tru Huynh
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2012 5:05 AM
To: Duke Nguyen
Cc: Beowulf Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] PXEBoot struggling

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 03:43:48PM +0700, Duke Nguyen wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
...
> After few days struggling with the system, here are what I have done:
>  * install SL6.3 on master node
>  * install DHCP server (using dhcpd) on master node
>  * install xinetd and enable tftp
>  * open firewall for tftp and dhcpd using iptables

You could ease your way and try warewulf:
http://hpc.admin-magazine.com/Articles/Warewulf-Cluster-Manager-Master-and-Compute-Nodes

> 
> So to summarize:
>  * boot using liveCD -> OK, logging in fine
>  * boot using rsync of master node's system -> OK, cant log in
SElinux is probably on the way, did you relabel?
>  * boot using rsync of client node's sytem -> cant boot
you need to build/setup the boot from nfs on yur diskless clients.
- do you have dracut-network installed (required for nfs booting)
- pass the nfsroot flags to your client
something like root=nfs:master:/nfsroot/c6 rw
- fix /etc/fstab for /
- fix /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
ONBOOT=no # since you already have network 

Cheers,

Tru
-- 
Dr Tru Huynh          | http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/unites/Binfs/
mailto:tru at pasteur.fr | tel/fax +33 1 45 68 87 37/19 Institut Pasteur, 25-28 rue du Docteur Roux, 75724 Paris CEDEX 15 France _______________________________________________
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