Configuration difficulties

[Dominic Baines]

Capt Bohn, Christopher A. wrote:

> Good day,
>    I'm in the middle of a full re-install for a couple different reasons,
> and I'm bumping into a couple problems I never did fully resolve with the
> previous installation.  So any suggestions you might have would, naturally,
> be greatly appreciated.
>
> First is memory & virtual memory configuration.  All nodes except one have
> 128MB of main memory; the exception has 256MB of main memory.  The two
> problems are recognizing more than 64MB of main memory and more than 128MB
> of virtual memory.
>      According to the HOWTO's, the fix for recognizing more main memory is
> to provide the bootprompt argument "mem=XXX", whether at the LILO prompt or
> in lilo.conf.  To keep the bootup process simple for the user, I decided to
> put the argument in lilo.conf, except that it doesn't work:
>           [cbohn@abc04 cbohn]$ more /etc/lilo.conf
>           boot=/dev/hda
>           map=/boot/map
>           install=/boot/boot.b
>           prompt
>           timeout=50
>           image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.33
>           append="mem=128M"
>           label=linux
>           root=/dev/hdb1
>           read-only
>           other=/dev/hda1
>           label=NT
>           table=/dev/hda

I can't say that it is that fussy on syntax but my config reads:# Linux bootable
partition config begins
image = /zImage
  root = /dev/hda3
  label = Linuxtest
  append = "mem=96M"
  read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

I'd ask if you ran /sbin/lilo after editing ? You checked that already ?

>           [cbohn@abc04 cbohn]$ more /proc/meminfo
>           total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
>           Mem: 65572864 30076928 35495936 31498240 2625536 17375232
>           Swap: 133885952 0 133885952
>           MemTotal: 64036 kB
>           MemFree: 34664 kB
>           MemShared: 30760 kB
>           Buffers: 2564 kB
>           Cached: 16968 kB
>           SwapTotal: 130748 kB
>           SwapFree: 130748 kB

My memory then appears:

dh010:~# more /proc/meminfo
        total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  97648640 62107648 35540992  9179136 42905600  2433024
Swap: 37154816  2183168 34971648
MemTotal:     95360 kB
MemFree:      34708 kB
MemShared:     8964 kB
Buffers:      41900 kB
Cached:        2376 kB
SwapTotal:    36284 kB
SwapFree:     34152 kB
dh010:~#

Don't forget to run /sbin/lilo after editing this file !

I run small swap on this system.

> Since I'd like this to be a hands-off bootup sequence, I'd rather not
> require the user to provide bootprompt arguments manually.
>      As for virtual memory, no matter how much swap space I partition, I
> seem to be limited to 128MB of usable swap space, and the HOWTO's don't
> offer any suggestions on how to make Linux recognize more swap space.

Create more swap partitions but make each no larger than 128M, I think this is a
kernel limitationbut I'm no guru there. Linux should recognise them all up to 64
or 128 of them, I can't recall
where the info on this can be found. But that's a lot of swap. Most systems only
use
2x RAM as swap normally. If you're swapping that much I'd say the Beowulf's
performance
would be pretty shitty - add more RAM. ns access vs ms access !!

> The second problem I'm running into is connecting to the outside world.  The
> system is dual-bootable Linux & NT, and we've decided to leave at least one
> node under Linux and one under NT at all times, except when all processors
> are required for one problem.  And we've decided to make the NT front-end
> the gateway to the outside world.  So I'm trying to get the Linux machines
> to use the NT front-end as the gateway.  Before giving it any direction, I'm
> able to ping the NT box's NIC on the LAN; after I specify "route add 0.0.0.0
> gw abc01" (where abc01 is the NT box), I'm able to ping the NIC that
> connects to the school's network, but nothing further.  I suspect there's
> something glaringly obvious I'm missing, but as I said, I'm missing it.

May sound really simple but have you got IP forwarding/routing enabled on the NT
box ?It sounds like the packets are dying at the NT box.

> I really appreciate any help you can provide.  Thanks.
>
> Take care,
> cb
>
> *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
> Capt Christopher A. Bohn
> Graduate Student, Electrical (digital) Engineering
> Air Force Institute of Technology     Phone (937)255-3636 (DSN 785)
> AFIT/EN638                              Lab x4606   Voicemail x6638
> 2950 P St, Box 4638                         email cbohn@afit.af.mil
> Wright-Patterson AFB OH 45433-7765                 EngrBohn@aol.com
>                http://members.aol.com/EngrBohn/
> *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

  Dominic Baines