NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/comp/os/linux/21180

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-21 | 1.6 KB

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From: [e-mail] (David Lubinsky)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Subject: Network of Linux pc's for postgrads - good idea?
Message-ID: <david.724877528@concave>
Date: 20 Dec 92 18:52:08 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: Computer Science, University of the Witwatersrand
Lines: 27

We want to set up a netwrok of linux machines for use by postgraduate
students. What I have in mind is about 10 386dx 40 Mhz machines with
8M of ram and small hard-disks, plus one server with a lot of ram and
a big disk with most of the software.

The idea is that the small machines would only use their disks for
booting and swapping, and would load all the other stuff from the
server via nfs mounts.  We would also put a DOS partition on each disk
for students who want to run DOS stuff.

This is a much more economical way of getting a Unix network going
than any other available, but is it practical?  I would very much like
to hear from other people who have tried similar arrangements.

In particular:

Is the NFS stable enough to rely on a server setup?
Is X performance "good enough"?
Does linus handle large disks (eg 600M) ok?

Thanks for any help
David
--
---------------------------David Lubinsky------------------------------
Dept. of Computer Science                   [e-mail]
University of Witwatersrand                       Phone: [phone]
Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, South Africa              FAX: [phone]