Windows CCS and Linux dual boo.doc

Switch Operating Systems on the Compute Cluster

If a computer‘s hard disk has no boot loader in the MBR and has two operating systems on its partitions, the computer‘s BIOS will execute the boot loader that is in the active partition and boot the OS that is installed on the active partition. The compute nodes can be forced to boot the desired OS by using a command or a script to flag the desired OS partition as active. After flagging the partition as active, all compute nodes must be rebooted to start the alternate OS.

To switch between Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 and SUSE Linux Enterprise

Server on the compute nodes, remotely change which hard disk partition is active on all of the compute nodes, and then reboot. You can change the state of the partitions with the scripts that were deployed to the compute nodes during OS installation, or you can change the state of the partitions manually.

If Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 is the active OS on the nodes, use the Compute Cluster Administrator GUI to remotely execute the diskpart script that was integrated during the RIS installation, and then reboot the compute nodes.

If SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the active OS, use your favorite method to remotely

execute the fdisk script that was integrated during the Linux installation, and then reboot the compute nodes. In this scenario, SSH was used to remotely execute the fdisk script on the compute nodes. The fdisk script used the answer file script /hpcscripts/MBRWindows-3.txt to change the active partition. If you have installed a dual boot setup for the

infrastructure node or the head node, you can manually set the active OS. For sample scripts, see Appendix 7.

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Figure 1 Dual Boot Configuration

/dev/cciss/c0d0p3 Windows Compute Cluster Server /dev/cciss/c0d0p2 Linux Swap Drive E Windows Compute Cluster Server, Active Partition Drive D Linux Swap /dev/cciss/c0d0p1 Linux with Grub, Active Partition Disk State 1: Linux will boot if Linux partition is active. Run script (FDISK) in order to activate Windows Compute Cluster Server partition and reboot to start Windows Compute Cluster Server. Drive C Linux with Grub Disk State 2: Windows Compute Cluster Server will boot if Windows partition is active. Run script (diskpart.exe) in order to activate Linux partition and reboot to start Linux.

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