Changes between Version 4 and Version 5 of Internal/CustomBIOS


Ignore:
Timestamp:
Sep 29, 2006, 3:14:13 AM (18 years ago)
Author:
anonymous
Comment:

—

Legend:

Unmodified
Added
Removed
Modified

  • Internal/CustomBIOS

    v4 v5  
    1 http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Welcome_to_LinuxBIOS
     1= Options (as of 9/2006) =
     2
     3http://www.openbios.info/ close to OpenBoot.
     4
     5http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Welcome_to_LinuxBIOS close to Linux.
    26
    37= Justification =
    48
    5 LinuxBIOS looks like a good bet for ORBIT, if we can port it to the ORBIT node hardware.  In theory, we have enough documentation of the ORBIT node hardware to do this.  LinuxBIOS will improve our node boot/imaging process in the following ways:
     9A custom BIOS looks like a good bet for ORBIT, if we can port it to the ORBIT node hardware.  In theory, we have enough documentation of the ORBIT node hardware to do this.  It will improve our node boot/imaging process in the following ways:
    610
    7111. It is relatively difficult to service 400 simultaneous DHCP requests with our network infrastructure.  There are COTS solutions, but these are overfeatured and therefore unreasonably expensive.  Observing that every node gets the same answer from the DHCP server for every request it sends (based upon its position in the grid), it would be possible to eliminate the DHCP step entirely and going straight to image download if we could pre-program nodes with their basic network identity by running our own BIOS.
    … …  
    11153. We may be able to provide other useful features in BIOS.  For example, we could inventory the devices on nodes without booting even as much as a PXE image.
    1216
    13 4. We almost certainly have not yet encountered the full extent of problems with grid/cluster computing presented by an installation such as ORBIT.  LinuxBIOS buys us a great deal of flexibility.  Also, because LinuxBIOS is used primarly on similar installations, it may already contain solutions for the problems we have not encountered yet.
     174. We almost certainly have not yet encountered the full extent of problems with grid/cluster computing presented by an installation such as ORBIT.  An Open Source BIOS affords us a great deal of flexibility.  Because LinuxBIOS is used primarly on similar installations, it may already contain solutions for the problems we have not encountered yet.
    1418
    1519= Potential Problems =
    … …  
    2327= Questions =
    2428
    25 1. Can we get it to play on our hardware?
    26 
    27 http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Supported_Chipsets_%26_Devices
     291. Can we get it to play on our hardware?  Last time this was looked at (when?) there were chips for which no support already existed. Although we have complete documentation for these chips, it seems like a lot of code to write, debug, and maintain.
    2830
    29312. Can we add the features we need (local static IP assignment, mtftp, etc.)?