[gentoo-soc] clustering-livecd

[gentoo-soc] clustering-livecd

[Sni]

Dear all,
My name is Mikeshin Igor.
Now I'm a first-year postgraduate-student in Baikal State Univercity of Economics and Law.
I'm researching a high performance computing complexes.

I'd like to take a part in the this year's GSoC. I'm interested in  'Make the clustering LiveCD from a previous GSoC bootable from USB' idea
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/userrel/soc/ideas.xml#doc_chap2_sect26
I think it would be great, and i'm going to use such usbflash in my univercity.

I've played a little with the scripts in proj repo; it is based on catalyst tool.
So, the main issue here is that building liveUSB/liveHDD is not supported by catalyst.
Then I guess I have to implement such functionality in catalyst.
What do you think? Is it right way?

I would also be appreciate for any help in my probation bugfixing. I'm looking for catalyst' bugs now.

Best regards,
Mikeshin Igor

Re: [gentoo-soc] clustering-livecd

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 6:31 AM, Sni <hoax@list.ru> wrote:
> I've played a little with the scripts in proj repo; it is based on catalyst tool.
> So, the main issue here is that building liveUSB/liveHDD is not supported by catalyst.
> Then I guess I have to implement such functionality in catalyst.
> What do you think? Is it right way?
>

I can't vouch for whether this approach is best (I'll leave that to
others more familiar with catalyst).  However, I'm sure there would be
general interest in the ability to create USB install media for
Gentoo, which might be a very nice byproduct of this approach if it
works for clustering.

Re: [gentoo-soc] clustering-livecd

[Jeremy Olexa]

 On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:53:33 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 6:31 AM, Sni <hoax@list.ru> wrote:

> However, I'm sure there would be
> general interest in the ability to create USB install media for
> Gentoo

 Huh? You mean something besides pointing sys-boot/unetbootin to the 
 install iso's? I'm not following.
 -Jeremy

Re: [gentoo-soc] clustering-livecd

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Jeremy Olexa <darkside@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Huh? You mean something besides pointing sys-boot/unetbootin to the install
> iso's? I'm not following.

The current Gentoo Handbooks provide no mention of how to install from
bootable USB.  If it is easy to do then we should probably update the
Handbooks.  If it is not easy to do, then making it easy to do would
be an improvement.

This is getting off-topic in any case.  It sounds like the goal of
this project is to make a bootable USB for setting up a Gentoo
cluster.  If this is already a solved problem then it doesn't sound
like a good project.

Rich

Re: [gentoo-soc] clustering-livecd

[Jeremy Olexa]

 On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:47:43 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Jeremy Olexa <darkside@gentoo.org> 
> wrote:
>> Huh? You mean something besides pointing sys-boot/unetbootin to the 
>> install
>> iso's? I'm not following.
>
> The current Gentoo Handbooks provide no mention of how to install 
> from
> bootable USB.  If it is easy to do then we should probably update the
> Handbooks.  If it is not easy to do, then making it easy to do would
> be an improvement.

 Right. Why should it be in an install handbook? It is largely 
 irrelevant to most new installs. Regardless, first hit when googling 
 "gentoo liveusb" http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml - unetbootin 
 is so trivially easy that there are no instructions that Gentoo 
 provides, afaik. Step 1, download iso. Step 2, hit button on 
 unetbootin's GUI.

>
> This is getting off-topic in any case.  It sounds like the goal of
> this project is to make a bootable USB for setting up a Gentoo
> cluster.  If this is already a solved problem then it doesn't sound
> like a good project.

 Yup, I'll drop this thread. Just didn't know what you were getting at.

 Cheers,
 Jeremy

>
> Rich

Re: [gentoo-soc] clustering-livecd

[David Abbott]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Jeremy Olexa <darkside@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:47:43 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Jeremy Olexa <darkside@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Huh? You mean something besides pointing sys-boot/unetbootin to the
>>> install
Blatant copy and paste :)

Starting in version 3.72, ISOLINUX supports a "hybrid mode" which can
be booted from either CD-ROM or from a device which BIOS considers a
hard disk or ZIP disk, e.g. a USB key or similar.

To enable this mode, the .iso image should be postprocessed with the
"isohybrid" script from the utils directory:

        isohybrid filename.iso

This script creates the necessary additional information to be able to
boot in hybrid mode. It also pads out the image to an even multiple of
1 MB.

This image can then be copied using any raw disk writing tool (on Unix
systems, typically "dd" or "cat") to a USB disk, or written to a
CD-ROM using standard CD burning tools.

        dd  if=livedvd-amd64-multilib-11.1-r3.iso   of=/dev/sdx

http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/Doc/isolinux

Thats how likewhoa does it on the LiveDVD's he puts together afaik.

Re[2]: [gentoo-soc] clustering-livecd

[Igor Mikeshin]

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:54:48 -0500 письмо от Jeremy Olexa <darkside@gentoo.org>:

>  On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:47:43 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Jeremy Olexa <darkside@gentoo.org> 
> > wrote:
> >> Huh? You mean something besides pointing sys-boot/unetbootin to the 
> >> install
> >> iso's? I'm not following.
> >
> > The current Gentoo Handbooks provide no mention of how to install 
> > from
> > bootable USB.  If it is easy to do then we should probably update the
> > Handbooks.  If it is not easy to do, then making it easy to do would
> > be an improvement.
> 
> Right. Why should it be in an install handbook? It is largely 
> irrelevant to most new installs. Regardless, first hit when googling 
> "gentoo liveusb" http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml - unetbootin 
> is so trivially easy that there are no instructions that Gentoo 
> provides, afaik. Step 1, download iso. Step 2, hit button on 
> unetbootin's GUI.
> 
unetbootin is not so good. It creates a READ-ONLY liveUSB. Moreover it is pretty buggy;
However, i agree that usb booting is not a big deal. 

> >
> > This is getting off-topic in any case.  It sounds like the goal of
> > this project is to make a bootable USB for setting up a Gentoo
> > cluster.  If this is already a solved problem then it doesn't sound
> > like a good project.
> 
> Yup, I'll drop this thread. Just didn't know what you were getting at.
> 
> Cheers,
> Jeremy
> 
> >
> > Rich

I think there are a real tasks with clustered-livecd in cluster building logic. 
I'm trying to contact with Eric Thibodeau, but with no luck yet

Igor