PXE Boot Cinelerra Render Farm

[Joshua Gardner]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Joshua Gardner
<mellowcellofellow at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's what I've got: a Lucid desktop with Cinelerra and a bunch of
> Windows laptops. I'd like to make the whole thing into a render farm for
> Cinelerra using a PXE booted live environment.
>
> I've already gotten one of the Windows laptops working with the Lucid
> Live USB with Cinelerra installed. It connects with ZeroConf to the
> wired network and I can mount the NFS-shared rendering directory, then
> start a couple instances of the Cinelerra render farm client (one for
> each core). On the desktop I can then render with the render farm and it
> goes quite quickly.
>
> I have 3 or 4 more laptops I'd like to add to the render farm. Trouble
> is I don't have enough Live USBs or CDs to set them all up. What I'd
> like to do is set up a PXE-booted "live" environment containing the
> Cinelerra and ffmpeg binaries, with NFS already set up and mounting the
> output directory, and starting an instance of the Cinelerra\ farm
> client. Ideally the PXE system would boot to a ramfs or read-only root
> (like the livecd) and only mount the output directory over NFS. If each
> instance of the live PXE system could be given a unique hostname so I
> don't have to use IP addresses that'd be perfect.
>
> I know with enough tinkering I can get this working. But I'd really
> like some tips, especially on setting up the PXE environment and
> creating the customized system that they will be booting. If I'm barking
> up the wrong tree, and there's an easier way, let me know. I'm not keen
> on a rendering taking 5 hours. I can't install Ubuntu permanently on the
> laptops.
>
> So, again, tips on setting up PXE servers and on making customized live
> environments greatly appreciated, especially with the NFS stuff.
>
> -Josh
>
>
>

What's the policy on bumping threads? Maybe I should try asking my
question a better way?