Warning: only for the most hard-core geeks

[Ce6]

How to install Linux on a dead badger.

This has been your inane link for the day.

[Tha_Pig]

But why install Linux when you can use the "Live CD" version that runs directly from the disk.

I'll try it on a dead possum...

[Squidflakes]

I've tried this on a variety of sea life, (by variety I mean several different species of octopus and squid) and I've found that Windows and Linux are completely underpowered for these applications. Linux and for the most part Winblows will run most mammals just fine. The hardware really isn't that complex, and the processing requirements are minimal. Running cephalopods on the other hands requires some big iron with dedicated processing power.

With the Sparc III processor, you can safely run 4 octopus arms, or 4 squid arms and 1 tentacle. About 512MB of RAM is going to be your minimum per processor, but I would recommend more if you're expecting a high performance undead minion. Drive space really isn't all that important as you can just pipe the input to console, but if you planning on logging a lot, you'll want to get a large drive array, or having a logging redirected to a SAN.
An I/O card per minion is required (obviously), so if you're planning on running a large army, you're going to need to invest in something like an E10K. One new feature that Sun has that really kicks the crap out of the WinTel and LinTel kiddies is the iSCSI (internet Spiritual Control Subjugation Interface) card. It has about 4 times the bandwidth of the bets Duppy card, something like a 7000 km range (more if you have iSCSI repeaters on your network) and has logic that allows you to perform up to seven actions at once (not really at once mind you, its just really good at spiritial time slice multiplexing).

As great as this is, there is an even better option. If you have the bucks to spend, you can upgrade to the new Sparc IV processors. They are built along the same lines as the Xeon hyperthreading procs, only, they work. Its like having two processors in one core, plus they have about double the onboard cache, so you can run an entire octopus or squid with a single chip. If you get something like a Sun E25K, you're looking at running 72 simultanious minions from a single 42U 19" tall enclosure.

Combined with all of this hardware, you've got Solaris as your OS. Being that Solaris was designed and built as a multiminion networked OS in the first place, you get some SERIOUS performance boosts.

Yea, its pricey, but for enterprise level zombie armies, you don't screw around with that lesser stuff.

[Fire Storm]

Well, I've had marginal luck getting a squirel to run off of a very hacked Palm Pilot. I mean, sure, I could command it to do things like forage or walk, but trying to get it to scamper across the power lines? Forget about it! Once that thing gets it's fourth leg off the pole, WHAM! It falls off the wire and hits the ground. You definately need more power than that.

On the other hand, I once took a rather large dog and installed 4 dual-processor systems in it and hooked up to be a nice Beowolf cluster. That... wasdisturbing to say the least. It occasionally would send me e-mails suggesting upgrades for itself. When it was starting to learn how to speak and use it's paws like hands, I knew I had to stop it. Fortunately, the cooling in the beast was VERY poor, and I knew from the start that I may have problems in the future, so I sent the command and had Seti@home start on each processor. Cooked itself within a few hours.

Don't know what I will work on next. Badgers? That's been overdone now. Besides... it would only be cool if I ALSO did a mushroom and a snake.
A large plant? Why?
I'd go for a human, but really, I am not into necrophelia.

[Squidflakes]

ooooh, I see the next internet flash movie already! Live action badgers!

That's brilliant FireStorm!


Also, what rev of Beowolf were you using? There is a known bug when running more processors than the meat can handle. For a dog, you really only need a 486 SX 66, maybe a Pentium I if you want him to do more tricks than licking his nuts and shitting on the rug.

Now if you want to do something really interesting, take that cluster you've already put together, and install Swarm. You should be able to run a moderate to large hive of bees.

[Fire Storm]

ooooh, I see the next internet flash movie already! Live action badgers!

Cosplayers have done it. People have gathered at a single location, done the badger dance en mass then left.
I wouldn't doubt that people have done it at raves.
It's real.
And it's everywhere.

Also, what rev of Beowolf were you using?

V6.66 running on a total of 8 AND (Advanced Necrotic Devices) Acheron 3.33 GHZ processors (2 processors per board), all connected in a 1GB star topography LAN. (If I could have fit more than 3 of those NICS, I would have had added a 5th system for a pentagram topography).

MASSIVE overkill, I know, but hey, that's how I am.

Now if you want to do something really interesting, take that cluster you've already put together, and install Swarm. You should be able to run a moderate to large hive of bees.

Maybe later. While I like the idea of several thousand independant systems controlled by a central system, I have this inate fear that they will form a conciousness in of themselves.

[Tellner]

The key to getting the networking running on a squid is the giant axon. Don't think of the hardware as a bunch of tentacles and arms radiating from the body. It's more like an old-style thicknet cable that you can drill taps into.

If you can get your hands on the source for AmphiBeOs there are drivers for running marine software on terrestrial animals and vice versa.

[Squidflakes]

Tellner: One of the benifits of having a squid as an undead computer controlled minion is the bandwidth made avaliable by the super axion. The reason I'm so keen on using Solairs is that it still contains the libraries for the original DEC Aethernet controllers and the man page actually has a weird little graphic of the AUI (aura unification interface) pin-outs. This is tremendous help, as diagnosing breaks in those thinknet hubs is a nightmare.


Speaking of nightmares, I tried to hack together something that would allow me to run my squids and octopuses on land. I had heard that AmphiBeOs did this really well, so instead of rewriting existing code, I tried to port the libs from one to the other. My big mistake was not reading the lib headers. It turns out that I wasn't using AmphiBeOs, I was using BeeOs. Lets just say that ink and honey don't mix.

FireStorm: Ugh.. talk about overpowered. Actually though, did you know most of your performance problems were probably from processor overhead? V6.66 has this weird bug, kind of like the old WindowsVD Servicer, where the more processors you add, the more processor management threads get created. Thus, once you cross the 4 proc threshhold, you start having to dedicate one processor to thread control per two processors, so in effect, you get a 50% performance decrease per proc after 4. So your 8 proc system is using all 8 procs for thread control.

[Fire Storm]

Ugh.. talk about overpowered. Actually though, did you know most of your performance problems were probably from processor overhead?

It was my first experience with a true cluster-fucked machine, so I think it did pretty well.
As for the problem with threads... I dunno... he seemed to be a little to smart to be using all 8 for thread control. Maybe I was using a different version... I know I wasn't using 7.77, that's for sure. No angelic properties in this dog!

[CyberFish]

Reminds me of the time I bought up some Pentium processors on eBay with the intent of wiring them into my eccentric grandfather's collection of animals preserved in formaldehyde. Unfortunately there had been a typo in the auction, and it seems that Pentagram processors do something quite different. At least I got the insurance when grandfather's mansion burned to the ground, but I'm still not certain the flames consumed them all...

[Squidflakes]

Ahh, but if you practiced good network security techniques, with a properly secured hellfirewall, you wouldn't be in this mess.

Ahh well, best to just move away from that particular platform, and try your experements in another part of the country, in some small, out of the way, backwoods town, or perhaps even in Alaska, among the degenerate esquimaux.