Please Note: This document is no longer the authoritative source for questions on how to set up SystemImager on the ACL here at Earlham College. Please check the Admin page (access restricted) for the now authoratative source.
The Athena Cluster:
The ACL Cluster:
The PVM is a completely new beast when it comes to
SystemImager. This is due to things such as the fact that each
node has 5 ethernet adapters. Where this comes into play is when
you are re-installing the system via the autoinstall feature of
SystemImager. Because the ISA ethernet adapter dosen't apear to
work with the autoinstall kernel (even after re-compiling the
kernel), we must use one of the other ethernet adapters to do the
initial install. After that, SystemImager uses the existing
connection to do syncronization. So, in order to do the initial
install, we need to do some tweeking of the
dhcpd.conf file so that it recognizes the adapter
properly. I left the file so that it contains all the Hardware
Addresses for eth0 (the ISA card) and
eth1 (the top PCI card). Under normal operation, the
address for eth1 should be commented. This is because
for some reason when there are 2 Hardware Addresses for one host,
dhcpd uses the last one that it sees, not whichever
one matches. When you need to re-install one of the PVM machines,
just un-comment the second hardware address and restart the DHCP
server. Before you start the re-install, you must also remember to
plug the hub network cable into the top PCI card. This must be
done so that the node can get to Noether. Now, once the download
of the files has begun, you can go and re-comment out the second
address for the host and restart the DHCP server, since it dosen't
need that Hardware Address anylonger. You then, must pay attention
and swap the network cables back when the node begins to beep
signaling that the download is complete. Once the cables are
swaped, you can safely reboot the node (remove any flopies if they
were used).