From owner-freebsd-net Tue Apr 25 17: 0:39 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from pogo.caustic.org (pogo.caustic.org [208.44.193.69]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9EB7337B5BE for ; Tue, 25 Apr 2000 17:00:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jan@caustic.org) Received: from localhost (jan@localhost) by pogo.caustic.org (8.10.0/ignatz) with ESMTP id e3Q03T439899; Tue, 25 Apr 2000 17:03:29 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 17:03:29 -0700 (PDT) From: "f.johan.beisser" To: Marc Tardif Cc: freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: clustering and netbooting In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org here's what worked for me, but it isn't really recommended.. i had machineA, the buildmaster, that had all the compiled stuff on it, and machineB, a laptop. MachineB would mount /usr/src and /usr/obj from machineA, then do a "make installworld" from the NFS mounts. the real trick is that machineA has to be able to read and write to and from the NFS mounts. the reasons for not doing this are pretty obvious, ranging from security (NFS is not the most secure protocol), to relativly high overhead of doing this over NFS. i've seen (it's in the archives, somewhere) something about using rsynch over ssh to duplicate everything over the machines, and that it'd match things by md5 checksum. as with anything in unix, there's many ways to solve this one problem. On Tue, 25 Apr 2000, Marc Tardif wrote: > I am currently running 3 freebsd boxes sharing tasks for the same domain: > 192.168.0.1 web.server.com web > 192.168.0.2 sql.server.com sql > 192.168.0.3 mail.server.com mail > > Problem is: how can I avoid having to build/install world and, to a lesser > extent, the kernel for each machine (same hardware)? > > Solution 1: netbooting > I have already encountered the problem of compiling the kernel in aout > format instead of the default elf format on 3.x in order to be able to > netboot the kernel. Once that will be settled, one of the three machines > will act as the boot server for the other two. These machines will then > mount only need the local hdd to mount swap and the following directories: > /etc, /tmp, /var, /usr/local. > > Problem is: even though my objective is reached and only one build/install > will be necessary, how much compromise in performance or potential > problems can I expect from such a setup? > > Solution 2: mounting directories from fstab > If possible, this option would mount the directories installed during > "make installworld". This will prevent me from having to build/install > world on each machine, but I'll still have to install a kernel for each > machine. > > Problem is: how do I know which directories must be mounted in order to > avoid having to build/install world on each machine? Also, can I expect > any compromise in performance or potential problems for this kind of setup > also? > > Marc > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message > +-----/ f. johan beisser /------------------------------+ email: jan[at]caustic.org web: http://www.caustic.org/~jan "knowledge is power. power corrupts. study hard, be evil." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message