RE: [SLUG] automated sequential boot of multiple machines

From: Ken Elliott (kelliott4@tampabay.rr.com)
Date: Fri Nov 18 2005 - 16:18:03 EST


>>> The alternative is to push 9 power buttons by hand when appropriate.

Or use this:

http://www.dataprobe.com/power/ip815.html

A power strip that can be controlled my a PC via serial port or Ethernet.
The primary PC starts up, the powers up each outlet one-at-a-time. This
setup works with non-pcs, like printers, external tape drives, etc.

But Logan has the easiest solution. Ian's solution is the most reliable and
best. And you could combine Ian's solution with the above power strip and
have pretty darn good control over the entire data centre.

Ken Elliott

=====================
-----Original Message-----
From: slug@nks.net [mailto:slug@nks.net] On Behalf Of Eben King
Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 6:39 PM
To: slug@nks.net
Subject: Re: [SLUG] automated sequential boot of multiple machines

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005, Mike Branda wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 17:03 -0500, Eben King wrote:
> > On Wed, 16 Nov 2005, Mike Branda wrote:
> >
> > > I figure I'll put this out there. I'm starting to think of a way
> > > that I can bring machines up here in sequence when the power is
> > > out for more than the designated run time of the backups.
> > > Obviously some machines have services that need to be up before
> > > others. I've just been reduced back to a one man operation and if
> > > things go amuck I'd like to be able to run a script from a remote
> > > machine. I was starting to think of something that uses wake on
> > > lan or something combined with a check on that service before the next
machine was given a "ring" to start up.
> > > Anybody do this in Linux yet?? Is there a project out there or a
> > > piece of hardware that does such a thing?? Anybody ever monkey
> > > with wake on lan??
> >
> > That seems to be basically what initscripts-6.95-1 does on my machine:
>
> This is for the local machine though. What I need is:
>
> Storm knocks power out for 2 hours. everything is off.
>
> 1.) run startservers.sh
>
> 2.) wake on lan gateway1
>
> 3.) done, return somehow or startservers.sh runs a check on the
> services that gateway1 provides.
>
> 4.) wake on lan dns_ntp1 - this box is dependent upon an internet
> connection provided by gateway1 or services will fail during init i.e.
> it cannot boot before the gateway.
>
> 5.) done, return somehow or startservers.sh runs a check on the
> services that dns_ntp1 provides.
>
> and so on.

Well, I'd say you can either do it as you've described, where each machine
kicks off the next at the appropriate time, or you can find some way to
check programmatically whether a network service is sufficiently "up", and
wait if it's not, polling the other machine periodically (I'd do it that
way, it'd be faster). I mean, there are certain tasks in the boot sequence
that aren't dependent on other machines (POST, bootloader, etc.).

> The alternative is to push 9 power buttons by hand when appropriate.

Or that, but that's a PITA.

-- 
-eben    ebQenW1@EtaRmpTabYayU.rIr.OcoPm    home.tampabay.rr.com/hactar
                  "God does not play dice" -- Einstein
          "Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws
          them where they can't be seen." -- Stephen Hawking

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