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We recommend this document principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference. The author and publisher will not take any responsibility if there is any damage caused by this document.
Steven Shiau (steven _at_ nchc org tw)
Blake, Kuo-Lien Huang (klhaung _at_ gmail com)
H. T. Wang (c00wht00 _at_ nchc org tw)
Ceasar Sun (ceasar _at_ nchc org tw)
Jazz Wang (jazz _at_ nchc org tw)
This documentation descripes the steps to setup a "DRBL" environment in RedHat Linux (8.0, 9), Fedora Core Linux (1, 2, 3), Mandriva Linux (9.2, 10.0, 10.1) or CentOS (4).
Install RedHat Linux, Fedora Core, Mandriva Linux or CentOS. Here we take RedHat 9 as an example. There are lots of information related to the installation process in http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/install-guide/. Meanwhile, Set up all Ethernet IPs at first and we will us the eth0 for WAN and others for LAN. In the following example, we use "eth0" to connect the Internet, while eth1, eth2, eth3 are for DRBL environment(Please set the IP address of these network cards to be private IPs, i.e. 192.168.x.x, the following example, we set eth1:192.168.101.254, eth2:192.168.102.254, eth3:192.168.103.254...); Please remember this principle, private IP (192.168.x.x) will be used for DRBL environment. We will overwrite your firewall rules when setting up the DRBL server. After you finish all the DRBL setup and test it ok, you can config your firewall using your rules. Remember in DRBL environment, NFS, NIS, tftp, and dhcp services are required.
After the Linux is installed in server, make sure the Hard Disk Drive DMA mode is on, it will accelerate the access speed of Hard Disk Drive in server. You can use "hdparm /dev/hdx" to check if the using DMA is on or off. If it¡¦s off, run "hdparm -d1 -c3 -k1 /dev/hdx" to open it, replace the /dev/hdx to the /dev/hda if your IDE HD for this Linux system is in "Primary IDE".
Make sure there is no problem with the WAN, because we need to use it to connect with NCHC DRBL Server to get the files for the following installation process.
Note for Selinux in Fedora Core 3 or later version - Unless you are a sophisticated administrator who understands the details of SELinux, it is recommended to turn off the selinux. Otherwise you might encounter some weird "Permission denied" problems. To disable that, set SELINUX=disabled in /etc/sysconfig/selinux or /etc/selinux/config then reboot your machine.
<Step 2a> Download the package here:
Stable branch:
sourceforge site or NCHC site
Testing branch:
sourceforge site or NCHC site (package maybe newer than that in sourceforge)
Unstable branch:
NCHC site
Before downloading or installing, it's a good idea to have a look at some change logs: Stable, Testing, Unstable, and known issues: Stable, Testing, Unstable.
<Step 2b> Install the downloaded rpm, such as "rpm -Uvh drbl-current.i386.rpm" or "rpm -Uvh drbl-1.3.10-19.i386.rpm" (Note: From version 1.3.10, the old package name "drbl-setup" is renamed as "drbl").
<Step 2c> run "/opt/drbl/setup/drblsrv -i". Examples are shown here
For the impatient: If you are impatient, just run "/opt/drbl/setup/drbl4imp" to finish step "2c" and "3a". "drbl4imp" will use the default vaules to setup the DRBL server. PLEASE REMEMBER! The default value might not fit your environment! It uses the "range" option in dhcp server, so your DRBL client will not always get the same IP address, and it assumes each network card in server (except eth0) provides DRBL services to 12 clients. If you want the setup to fit your environment, please run step "2c" and "3a" step by step.
Arrange
your environment, make sure you know it.
For example in Room C of
National
Center of High Performance Computing (NCHC): There are 40
units of computers in Room C. In order to get the better efficience in
DRBL, we separate them to 4 subnets, so they are 192.168.100.0,
192.168.101.0, 192.168.102.0 and 192.168.103.0. There are 4 Ethernet
cards in DRBL
server. One is for WAN and the others are for LAN. The IPs of DRBL
environment (LAN) are
192.168.100.254, 192.168.101.254, 192.168.102.254 and 192.168.3.254.
The services DHCP, TFTP, NFS, etc will run on eth0:1, eth1, eth2, and
eth3.
NIC NIC IP Clients
+-----------------------------+
| DRBL SERVER |
| |
|+-- [eth0] public IP +- to WAN
| (ex. 61.216.116.23) |
| |
|+-- [eth0:1] 192.168.100.254 +- to clients group 1 [ 10 clients, their IP
| | from 192.168.100.1 - 192.168.100.10]
|+-- [eth1] 192.168.101.254 +- to clients group 1 [ 10 clients, their IP
| | from 192.168.101.1 - 192.168.101.10]
|+-- [eth2] 192.168.102.254 +- to clients group 2 [ 10 clients, their IP
| | from 192.168.102.1 - 192.168.102.10]
|+-- [eth3] 192.168.103.254 +- to clients group 3 [ 10 clients, their IP
| | from 192.168.103.1 - 192.168.103.10]
+-----------------------------+
When you use multiple NICs to expand the bandwith, we DO recommend you set the MAC addresses so that every node will get the same IP address all the time. (i.e. in the fillowing step 3a, when you run "/opt/drbl/setup/drblpush -i", it prompts "Do you want to fix the IP address of client connected to eth1 by giving MAC address ? [y/N]", say "Y"). If you do NOT set MAC address (we will call it "range" from now), and you have only one 48-port network switch (or many switches but connected to be one), and you use 4 NICs (or more than 2...) in DRBL server to expand the network bandwith, 1 problem will occur, i.e. some clients will not lease IP from DHCP server, so it will not be able to boot.
On the other hand, if your DRBL server use 4 NICs to expand the network bandwidth (This means that 4 NICs with 4 private subnets, such as 192.168.100.x, 192.168,101,x, 192.168.102.x, 192.168.103.x), and you have exactly 4 switches, which is seperated, not connected to each other. Then you can use range, i.e. you do not have to set the MAC address of clients.
Please remember, if you use N NICs to expand network bandwidth in DRBL
server, if you want to use "range" way, then you must have N switches,
which are not connected to each other. ("not
connected" is very important)
- The authors would like to thank NCHC Director Chuang for his support in Free and Open Source Software. Special thanks also go to Dr. San Ko, and NCHC Opensource task force. The authors also would like to thank Prof. Mao, Mr. Yu and the Ministry of Education, Taiwan for the supports of multi-disciplinary education.
- If you feel this DRBL is really helpful to you, please email us. We will appreciate if you tell us the way you use. If you find some bugs, please let us know.
Your donation will make DRBL better.
Donate (via SourceForge.net)
Edit the doc for DRBL!
- http;//drbl.nchc.org.tw
- http://drbl.sf.net
- http://opensource.nchc.org.tw
- http://www.study-area.org/
- http://etherboot.sourceforge.org/
- http://www.rom-o-matic.net/
- http://www.ltsp.org/
- Diskless HOWTO
- Diskless-nfs-root HOWTO
- Diskless-nfs-root-other HOWTO
- Network-boot-HOWTO
- NIS HOWTO
- NFS HOWTO
- Etherboot User Manual
- http://disklessworkstations.com/
- How to pick a bootrom
- DIET-PC