Plug the monitor into the power strip and turn it on.

Find the machine with two network connections; this is the master node.

Plug the master node into the power strip and connect the monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Power on the master node and insert the Rocks Kernel CD into the CD-ROM drive, then press the reset switch.

If you wait too long and your machine starts booting off of the hard drive, just press the reset button to make it boot from the CD-ROM. If your machine still insists on booting from the hard drive you may need to modify its BIOS settings.

As soon as the boot menu appears, type "frontend" to boot the frontend installation. If you wait too long without pressing any keys, it will attempt to boot as a cluster. If this happens, simply restart the machine and try again. The first screen to appear should list the available "rolls," with the first four already selected (ganglia, kernel, hpc, base). Select "sge" in addition to these and select "OK."

Note: "rolls" are Rocks' way of packaging many pieces of software together for a common task. Instead of worrying about all of the RPMs and libraries needed for a particular function, just download a roll for it. "SGE" or the "Sun Grid Engine" is what allows us to queue jobs on the cluster.

The installer will ask you if you have another roll CD-ROM to load. Choose "Yes" to process another CD. Insert OS Disc 1 into the drive and press Enter.

Repeat for OS Disc 2.

Once all CDs are loaded, select "No" in order to continue. The current CD will be ejected, and you might have to wait several minutes for the next step as the computer silently processes.

You should be presented with various fields to input. The only required field is "Fully Qualified Hostname." Enter the full host and domain name of the master node as given to you by the instructor. The other fields can be left at their defaults or replaced with any arbitrary data you'd like. This is completely optional, and only used internally. Select "OK" when done.

You will then be prompted whether you want to the installer to autopartition your drive, or manually set up the partitions yourself using Disk Druid. Select "Autopartition."

Next you'll configure both ethernet cards of your frontend. "Eth0" is used for the private network, and its settings can be left default. "Eth1" is for the outside network, and you should input the IP Address given to you by your instructor. The default netmask should be fine. Select "OK" when done with each interface.

Enter these settings:
Gateway:        129.97.152.1
Primary DNS:    129.97.152.10
Secondary DNS:  129.97.152.100
Tertiary DNS:   129.97.128.10
and select "OK" to continue.

You will then be prompted for your root password. Enter this password twice (and write it down somewhere) and select "OK" to continue.

Now begins the copying process. The installer will prompt you for CD changes as necessary, and copy their contents to a temporary location on the harddrive. You should only have to provide each CD once.

When the CDs have been copied over, the installer will merge the rolls on the harddrive and begin the actual install. While this is happening, feel free to start setting up the rest of the nodes. Each node needs a power cable connected to the power strip and a network cable going from their only network card to the mini switch. The master node has two ethernet connections.

-- Main.echrzano - 14 Nov 2006