Installing Linux (without CD/floppies)

[Mark Hahn]

> >What's the best way to install Linux RedHat in a 40-node
> >Beowulf whose nodes don't have neither floppy nor

why *install* at all?  so far at least, I'm booting my new cluster
entirely diskless.  each node actually has a disk, but nothing is 
installed on it - everything is PXE and NFS.  obviously, this is 
more network-intensive, but is it really an issue if your jobs last
for more than a couple minutes?

> As long as your network cards' support PXE (most do nowadays), then it is

is that really true?  great if so!  I haven't looked, but tend to only
expect builtin eth to support PXE...

> The only potentially laborious step is collecting the MAC address first and
> tweaking each BIOS to enable PXE booting.

dhcpd can allocate IPs from a pool; if you don't need stable IPs,
you don't need to collect the MAC...