A brief overview.
In several steps.
The cluster is organized as a private network on the 192.168.2.0 network. This means it is unreachable from the internet. This is a security measure.
The cluster control server "master" is on this same network as well.
If no machines contain a working linux environment, then you will need to log onto the "master" server itself to change boot settings. This can be done at the console in room K-10, or by using ssh given the server's alternate IP address of 130.60.61.12. If you are using this method skip forwards to using lynx
In most cases, however you should be able to find a working linux environment within three tries or less, and then run lynx from there. This is my preferred way to begin a clustering session.
Linux Boot Trick To get a machine into linux when it is in MacOS boot mode, you need to halt the boot process at the OF prompt, and give the following command:
boot enet:0,bootlinux
If your network connection is working properly the machine will start booting Linux withing 30 seconds or less. If it still boots to MacOS, then the first thing to check is the network cable. Students often pull them out in order to plug their laptops in. The second thing to check is the OF boot settings. Assuming you have a linux login prompt now, log in as root. Use the command "apt-get install lynx" to install lynx if it is not installed already.
NOTE: The above boot command will boot linux using whatever yaboot.conf setting happens to be set at the time.
It is self explanatory, just play around a bit, and remember to set it back to MacOS mode when you are finished or face the wrath of teachers, students, and administrators, when all they can get is Linux at 8:00 am.
So, for a quick start, let's do a fresh install. This is usually faster than trying to figure out why it isn't working right, or why one or two or three machines aren't working right.
After following the only link from the http://master/ web page you scroll to the bottom of the boot settings page and there you will find a "Set All To:" section. Click on "Install_Linux", and note the "next boot" setting for all machines. If you were using netscape you would see nice toaster icons as well.
All that remains to reinstall linux on all 60 some machines is to go around and reset them, or turn them on, or plug them in and turn them on, or wake them up from sleep mode so you can turn them on.
Then of course go around a second time and find all the machines that had their network cables unplugged.
This whole process should not take longer than 15 minutes to complete, with all machines rebooting automatically into normal run linux mode at the end of the install process. The web page control settings will be set to "postinst" automatically as well. This is merely an alias for "Linux_hda11" which is the normal linux run mode.
At this point you now have a base installation of debian on each machine, and you will need to copy over and run a secondary installation script.
Example script:
#!/bin/sh # second stage installation script # Copyright Peter Jordan 2001
export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=Noninteractive
apt-get -y install pvm apt-get -y install nano wget rsh-client rsh-server
mount /home # TODO rsync password list, from server side DON'T FORGET
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