If one were to build nodes without ECC memory it would probably be a good idea to reboot them from time to time to clean out whatever bad bits might have accumulated. It then occurred to me that doing so would require a trip through the BIOS on every reboot, at least on every x86 based computer I'm familiar with. That is not a terrible thing, but it made me wonder if it is really necessary. Is there a way to configure a machine to reboot by having the OS pass control directly to the boot loader, and so skip the BIOS? An additional reason for being able to do this, although not so much on beowulf nodes, would be that, by loading a different boot loader configuration on the way down, one could choose which of several OS's to boot _before_ the reboot on a multi-boot computer. For instance, some multi-boot PCs I manage in a remote classroom boot to windows by default, so if I want to work on their linux systems I have to walk over there so as to be able to select that option from the boot menu.
David Mathog [EMAIL PROTECTED] Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
