The cluster

[Idolrevolver]

Why is it portrayed as so challenging to change the OS on these laptops? Once they boot into a live environment, the custom cluster kernel will no longer interfere. Power on each separately (no OS will prevent booting to bios, no matter how badly designed), boot to a live CD or USB, then install the GNU/Linux distro of your choice.

[llearch]

Given the programmer wrote his own kernel, I would not be massively surprised to learn he'd written his own bios as well.

After all, if you want all three to boot at the same time, you've got to manage the boot process so that you can flick the switch on all three and make it go. Or there has to be ~2-3 minutes leeway to account for differing boot times, for example, for when the disk has been mounted 180 times without checking...

Which, with the 10 minute hibernate thing, is somewhat tricky.


Perhaps the author had a process he'd run which would anti-hibernate, so that he didn't have to keep jiggling the mice while working? That would make sense. "run this, it keeps the cluster alive and working"

Which suggests (assuming this were taken as gospel) that the cluster is such a mess because half of it isn't actually going. And if you're going to do this for yourself, you tend to leave things out of auto-start, in case you want to not start them, sometimes. In a larger environment (ie, when you have other people working on it) auto-start tends to be better. Worst case, make damn sure there are init.d scripts to run things...

... but I digress.

[Idolrevolver]

Even if he did alter the bios, most can be reset to factory settings fairly easily.
http://www.wikihow.com/Reset-Your-BIOS

[doctor100]

My computer freezes after it hibernates.

I don't know what's wrong, a program that checks my system when I come back would be useful. should I just switch this windows machine to linux?




--
Doctor100

[Tailsteak]

I'm interested to see how you guys interpret the technical details as the story progresses.

[Idolrevolver]

should I just switch this windows machine to linux?

Yes. GNU/Linux is always preferable to proprietary operating systems eg Windows. I recommend Ubuntu.

[llearch]

Even if he did alter the bios, most can be reset to factory settings fairly easily.
http://www.wikihow.com/Reset-Your-BIOS

You misunderstand.

Adjusting the BIOS settings is one thing. The "reset your BIOS" actually resets the section of the memory put aside for storing the user's selection of settings - which disks, which IRQs, etc. It does NOT re-write your BIOS back to the original, builder-supplied version. It just tells the version you have to use the defaults instead of the stuff you've configured.

What I was suggesting was something like coreboot, formerly known as LinuxBIOS, where the whole BIOS is replaced entirely. If the programmer was sufficiently masochistic, he may well have done something like that. Which makes putting anything else on there tricky, since a home-brew BIOS may do things like looking in a particular block of the disk for the boot process. Which is not necessarily the same block that the default BIOS would.

That's just a basic option. You can, if you really want, start doing some seriously strange things with a system when you have total control over all parts of it. Quite why you'd want to, of course, is a totally different question. About the only idea I can come up with so far is "to learn how the BIOS is put together", which, you'd think, would only go so far and then put the original BIOS back. Of course, he may have forgotten to include code in the BIOS allowing it to be updated, so has written other things elsewhere in the system to work around the problem... which would be impressive, since that chunk is usually in hardware.

[Idolrevolver]

Not quite. It does not pass instructions to the bios, just clears everything in the temporary memory. I was assuming he loaded his custom code into the temporary memory usually used for settings, as the only other way to replace the factory bios would be to replace the bios chip, which is usually soldered on to the motherboard.
EDIT: OK, after poking around the coreboot wiki, I have realised that the bios itself is not read-only as I thought it was. So it is possible the bios is custom. If it is, they will probably need to reflash to coreboot, which will probably not involve leaving it on for long enough for it to go into hibernate.

[doctor100]

Yes. GNU/Linux is always preferable to proprietary operating systems eg Windows. I recommend Ubuntu.

see, it's words like 'always preferable' that make me think it's all lies. I use Ubuntu on a computer now, though not a computer I own, and it definitely has it's bugs and quirks, it doesn't 'not crash' and it's word processing/layout software is nowhere near as versatile as MS Word.

Now, the philosophy of simplicity is well and good, and honestly most of the time I can find a work around without using word (not always), and I have simplified my own needs dramatically since using Apple, Ubuntu, Microsoft and Google rather than Microsoft only. Cross text formating can be a pain.

I mean, if I need voice to text i can get that with Ubuntu, but it's web-based and universal to all systems, if i need GIS there is an option, but hell I don't even know what 'repository list' is: I haven't used command line prompts since 92, back when I was ten years old. Heaven forbid I should look up '3d mapping Ubuntu' I don't even understand what the hell I'm reading, at least I understand most technical how-to manuals-but Ubuntu barely has those, and those it has are clearly nonprofessional.

"always preferable" is only assuming that you have the time to learn the field. I don't. I'm a public policy guy, and frankly there is more information out there about that than I could hope to have a complete specialization-especially considering to do medical you need to learn medical, to do transportation you need to learn infrastructure, etc (economics, social welfare) etc(accounting, technology). So If I need GIS, =then I need to be able to rely on that GIS, have it usable by other people, and have it explainable to people with absolutely no field of study understanding.

IF, and i mean IF it is worth my time in potential added functionality THEN I could learn. But otherwise I just using the basic windows interface-and it seems, losing a whole lot of function.

I'm thinking about it.

[Felblood]

should I just switch this windows machine to linux?

Yes. GNU/Linux is always preferable to proprietary operating systems eg Windows. I recommend Ubuntu.

Please tell me you're joking.

Surely you're not so full of hatred for Microsoft that you would foist Linux on a person, with no consideration for circumstance.

Sometimes, you just don't need that degree of control, and the extra options just get in the way. I know Linux has gotten a lot better than it used to be (Yes, I've used Ubuntu.), but if you don't know how to Grep things, just stick to Windows unless you want to learn a bunch of new things, before you can use your computer again.

Also, some people still need DirectX.

Doctor100:

Do you need sleep mode? You could try disabling it, if this is a desktop model.

I once resolved a problem like this by updating some drivers, though my memory fails on the details.