So I’ve started the BOINC farm I want. The first step is building the PXE server. I got a Core 2 Quad 9450 CPU with an ASUS mobo and 4G of RAM to be used as the PXE server. I need to configure this as a DHCP server and some other things at this time unknown. Part of the research I still need to do. I also just picked up two VIA 2500E mobo with a C7 processor built in and 2G of RAM each. These two systems will PXE boot to a minimal Ubuntu system and will just run the BOINC client.
The Core 2 Quad system went into an old case I had lying around. Actually my old Dual PIII 550 system that died a while back. I got a new 500W power supply for it but used an existing hard drive, DVD drive and floppy drive. The VIA mobos will be stacked together and will share another 500W power supply. I hope to have at least 4 VIA mobos sharing the one power supply eventually.
The server is running Ubuntu and still needs to have some critical components installed. The first thing I know I need is to configure it as my DHCP server. This means that the current DHCP service being provided by the router will need to be turned off. I think I need to configure a DNS server as well and then setup the PXE environment and OS that will get downloaded to the VIA systems. All stuff that I need to research. I need a TFTP server to download the OS files.