Re: [ProgSoc] Challenge to ProgSoc members

[Nicholas FitzRoy-Dale <wzdd@nospam.tig.com.au>]

At 05:53 PM 5/29/98 +1000, Telford Tendys wrote:
>> yes, a very very very good point, ummm, is there a way we can input that
>> kind of data at the "Boot:" prompt? What about using RARP? As in the
>> machine knows it's hardware address and just needs to figure out it's ip
>> address. Actually RARP is the best soloution....much neater :)
>
>If we have any interest in keeping ITD on side then we don't want Progsoc
>members going round using whatever is the first IP number to come into their
>heads and generating network chaos.

That's OK, though - you should be able to use an entirely different subnet
for the Linux workstations. What's the Uni running? 192.168.*.*? In which
case you can use the 10.0.0.* subnet, or whatever. You just need to be sure
of what's there, so nothing gets stuffed :-)

>However, there still remains the problem of system MEMORY.
>Assuming you don't actually want a floppy as your working disc then
>you need to load it all into ramdisc. This eats memory and if the
>PCs are around 16M or less then being a bit careless will result
>in an unusable machine. This means severely trimming down fonts and
>display manager icons and any other crap that fills up space.

Why you can't compile the Linux kernel to use a Progsoc machine as an NFS
server, using the "root file system on NFS" option for the kernel? That way
you don't *need* a ramdisk at all. Then set up an NFS mount on one of the
Progsoc machines and have everything read-only except the temp directory,
or something :-)

Swap space might be an issue if you're running X, though.

- Nicholas
wzdd@nospam.tig.com.au.

" 'Ahar,' said Pooh, as he pulled the pirate ship through the window by its
tiny little sail..."
- Cate

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