Nforce2 boards now compatible with diskless farms

[haysdb]

Lockheed proved it could be done. I proved that even someone of "lesser intellect" can do it.

Lockheed and I are now using nForce2 chipset boards in our diskless farms.

It wasn't easy (understatement of the week), but that's largely because I didn't know what I was doing. For example, I had never built a kernel from sources, had never done a 'make dep && make clean'. It was "a learning experience," that's for sure.

Like Lockheed, I used the Reverse engineered nforce driver for ethernet, forcedeth. It's possible I could have used the nVidia driver instead, I don't know. I don't know why not, since the driver is installed as a "loadable module", but I don't know. Now that I know how to build a Linux kernel and an initrd (initial ramdisk), I might try adding nVidia's nvnet driver to the same configuration. I don't see any reason they can't both be included. The hitch, of course, is that there is no source code for nVidia's driver, but I don't think this should be a problem.

David

[Lockheed]

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[haysdb]

Do you mean linuxrc, the startup script that loads the modules?

I'm a little disappointed that you have already gotten nvnet working.

LTSP will need to add the forcedeth driver as well, in order for nForce to be fully supported, but I know that was implied.

Damn, where were you this weekend dude, when I was struggling to make this work?

David

[Lockheed]

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[haysdb]

Lockheed, what exactly did you change to get autodetect to work? The message comes out of script linuxrc, which is found in the initrd (initial ramdisk):

Code: Select all

if [ -z "${NIC}" ]; then
    NIC=`/bin/pci_scan /etc/niclist`
    if [ -z "${NIC}" ]; then
        [ -w /proc/progress ] && echo f >/proc/progress
        echo
        echo "ERROR!  Could not automatically detect the network card."
        echo "        PCI cards should be detected automatically."
        echo "        ISA cards cannot be detected, so they require"
        echo "        the nic driver to be specified in a 'NIC=' parameter"
        echo "        to be passed on the kernel command line,"
        echo "        usually specified in option-129, in the"
        echo "        /etc/dhcpd.conf file.  See the LTSP docs for more info."
        echo
        exit 1
    fi
fi

Looks to me like .../ltsp_initrd_kit/root/etc/niclist needs to be updated to include the forcedeth or nvnet driver (before the initrd is built). Here are the lines for the VIA driver:

Code: Select all

1106:3043	via-rhine
1106:3065	via-rhine
1106:3106	via-rhine
1106:3053	via-rhine

Of course, I have no idea what the first numbers are or what they would be for an nForce2.

David

[Lockheed]

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[haysdb]

Excellent work Lockheed. You are a true pioneer.

David

[haysdb]

Lockheed, do you remember what you needed to do to include the nvnet driver? I don't know that I will bother, unless the forcedeth driver gives me trouble, but I would like to know how it would be done, if and when I do decide to do it.

David

[Lockheed]

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[ColdFlame]

AFAIK latest kernel is something like 2.6.1, does it work with NForce too?

[Lockheed]

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[haysdb]

The webpage is at: http://www.geocities.com/nf2ltsp/

Excellent!

David