EXTREME Overclocking - Building A Diskless Folding @ Home Farm Article - Page: 3
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Building A Diskless Folding @ Home Farm

Project: Folding @ Home
Date Written: November 25, 2002
Written By: Jason Rabel

 

Configuration Files:

Just a note before we get into the custom configuration part, on the last page I will put up all the config files listed in this how-to in a compressed file for download. However I highly suggest reading through everything here completely so that you can get a better understanding of how everything works.

Now it's time to get down to the nitty gritty and configure the files. The first file is the dhcpd.conf file, which tells all the clients what file to load and what their network settings are. The DNS server I use is my broadband router's IP address, yours may vary. I also put in a subnet range of .101 - .200 which gives me room for more than enough folding machines, you can adjust to bigger if you really need it (the thought of that many farms running in my house makes me think of the fire department).

Each client machine gets a hostname of "ws00x" where "x" gets incremented for each new machine, this is done mostly for simplicity, as we go into the other configuration files you will understand better why it is done like this. The main thing you will need change is under each host ws00x you will need to find out each clients MAC address to enter. The filename you won't need to adjust, but make sure the "vmlinuz-2.4.19-ltsp-1" file exists in the /tftpboot/lts directory. The PXE booting is a little different, the necessary files are in that separate GZip file mentioned before, along with instructions on where to put each file and the configuration differences (which are for the most part like below).

Here's a picture of the back of one of my NICs as an example. The MAC address of the NIC below is 00:10:B5:C0:C2:F6.

Don't worry about the farm's dhcp server interfering with your broadband router's dhcp server. Because you are only specifying the network that is on eth1 (the folding farm), it doesn't listen for or respond to dhcp requests on eth0 (your existing home network). This is nice because you can add on the farm without having to change anything on your existing network.

/etc/dhcpd.conf

# Make changes to this file and copy it to /etc/dhcpd.conf
#
# If the setting below doesn't work,
# then try changing to the following setting:
# ddns-update-style ad-hoc;
ddns-update-style none;

default-lease-time 21600;
max-lease-time 21600;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 192.168.2.255;
option routers 192.168.2.100;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.254;
# You can set the domain name below if you have one,
# otherwise it's okay to leave it commented out.
# option domain-name "localdomain.com";
option root-path "192.168.2.100:/opt/ltsp/i386";
option option-128 code 128 = string;
option option-129 code 129 = text;

shared-network WORKSTATIONS {
  subnet 192.168.2.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
    range 192.168.2.101 192.168.2.200;
  }
}

group {
  use-host-decl-names on;
  option log-servers 192.168.2.100;
  host ws001 {
    hardware ethernet 00:10:B5:9B:BC:65;
    fixed-address 192.168.2.101;
    filename "/lts/vmlinuz-2.4.19-ltsp-1";
  }

# This client boots via PXE,
# that is why some of the settings are different

  host ws002 {
    hardware ethernet 00:D0:B7:48:2E:20;
    fixed-address 192.168.2.102;
    filename "/lts/pxelinux.0";
    #The next line wraps with all the digits, but it should be only 1 line with no spaces
    option vendor-encapsulated-options  09:0f:80:00:0c:4e:65:74:77:6f:72:6b: 20:62:6f:6f:74:0a:07:00:50:72:6f:6d:70:74:06:01:02:08:03:80:00:00:47:04:80:00:00:00:ff;
  }
}

 

The hosts file you will need to enter the IP & hostname of the server & each client machine, otherwise you could run into errors.

/etc/hosts

#Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 PE1400SC localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.2.100 server
192.168.2.101 ws001
192.168.2.102 ws002

 

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