Hello RockMumbles and others!

Thanks for your response.

When you run from the HD-install, do you run knoppix as the compressed image or as the "expanded" system - in other words, can you simply edit config files in the system and add applications with apt-get as you do with a "normal" Debian?

KDE not running well eh? That's a shame.

Ok, I will here briefly explain the (to me) ideal layout of the cluster I plan to construct and let you guys see if it is possible to do that, according to the difficulties mentioned above.

One computer shall be the "master node" (aka server ), from which the openmosix cluster can be monitored and controlled. This is the only box with a HD and a CD player. The other nodes are diskless and shall boot into clusterknoppix over the network using the service provided by the server and then join the cluster. As far as I understand, this should be able to do more or less automatically - once the server is up, the bios of the nodes should be set to boot from the LAN, right? The server is the only node that actually "contains" any software.

However, I do not want to run the clusterknoppix server from a CD for various reasons. 1. Program latency and spin-down effects when running from CD. 2. Occupied CD-drive. 3. No ability to update files, programs and other aspects of the OS.

I want one "Debianized" HD-install on the server and run the others off the network (which, most importantly, saves me from buying CD and HD drives).

For this I need to retain the function of the terminalserver, don't I? Or maybe I have misunderstood this. The problem seems to be to be able to retain the function while at the same time having a "normal" (not CD-image on a HD-disk) installation of ClusterKnoppix.

I can not figure out how to explain this in a better way, so I hope someone of you understand.

Do you think this is possible to do with ClusterKnoppix, with relatively "little" hacking/manual configuration from my part, or should I try to construct this from scratch with Debian or Gentoo?

The latter requires setting up hardware detection, openmosix and lan-booting and dynamical node-joining manually I guess. With the risk of distracting from the problems above, I think have to put this potential cluster idea into its context. The main points are that this is going to be a scientific cluster that 1) can be administrated easily and not only by me/geeks, 2) that can be constructed from cheep nodes - diskless AMD rack nodes can cost as little as about 500 dollars/euro, 3) expanded (and "heterogenized") when budget allows for it, and finally 4) crunch numbers effectively. Minimal administration and maximal fun

Were it not for the shortcomings mentioned above, ClusterKnoppix seems just VERY VERY RIGHT for the task.

Did you read all of this? I'm impressed!