Redundant Servers

[Greg Swallow]

Hey all:

Finally got FC3 installed on my older boxes. HDB=CDROM and NODMA didn't 
do the trick. This after much remorse
from trying to get this farm of mine to do its' thing. Render farm just 
isn't gonna happen.

The Story:

Bought custom BIOS for two of the four boxes; I have two pairs of boxes 
with same motherboard and configuration.
They were:

Twin 2xPII300MHz boxes and twin 1xPIII550MHz boxes. My original idea 
was to pair up the systems a P2 behind
each P3. Using openMosix to join them and engage when modeling task 
require it. Not gonna happen after the
disaster of custom BIOS install. P2 flash was good, but machines 
started acting flaky. P3 flash gave me a none
booting system. "Bad flash," says BIOS people. Ok I have other W29C020 
IC swapped EPROM with each twin. Flash
again with new BIOS. The we had four machines not functioning 
correctly. What should've been a 10 minute upgrade
turned into a three month argument, but I am running on. I did get the 
money and a pair of replacement EPROM; e.g.
SST29E020. Now need to find two compatible EPROM that I can flash with 
the programmer I have.

Anyway, to my question for y'all. I now have five boxes on this render 
network; 192.168.1.0:

	firewall	192.168.1.101		1x PII550MHz	(still down waiting for EPROM)
	render	192.168.1.102		1xP42.53GHz	(no more cluster, went to single 
modeling workstation)
	g5		192.168.1.103		2xG5 1.8GHz	(had to get work done during the 
arguing so I bought a PowerMac)
	server1	192.168.1.104		2xPII300MHz	(2xPII300MHz; 256mb; 16mb nVidia; 3 
NIC; 4x6 changer; 3, 1, and 40gb HDD)
	server2	192.168.1.105		2xPII300MHz	(2xPII300MHz; 256mb; 16mb nVidia; 3 
NIC; 4x6 changer; 3, 1, and 40gb HDD)

Ended up getting out the only none UDMA drives I had; NEC 4x6 
CD-Changers. Hey FC3 Booted and installed from
changer slot 1; hurray! Each of the five machines have 10/100 NIC going 
to the switch. server1 and server2 also have
two extra NIC bonded in a cross-over network between each other. I 
would like to setup server1 with basic network and
Samba settings and duplicate/mirror the same on server2. Then modify 
each to bond and have server2 mirror and take
over in the case of failure of server1. Anyone have a HowTo I could get 
to?

Thanks for your support.

God Bless,

GregS <><