problem running as diskless client using ramdisk

[rbutcher]

Greetings again from Sydney. I have a diskless linux box (running knoppix) connected to my lan, using ramdisk for files.
I manage to run setuser.pl ok, then I run client - it attempts to download libal110c.so, instead of libemt2.so, which is what my other linux boxes (which have disks) download and run. Why the difference ? Different linux version requirements ?
In any case, it fails to download libal110c.so and just hangs in "connecting to server".
This diskless client can access the internet via the lan, I tested it by downloading the eon_client.tar.gz file.
???

[Bok]

Try doing an ldd against the client file.

I seem to remember having compatibility issues with eon and knoppix.

Bok

[graeme]

The fact that the client is initially trying to load the al110c is not a problem. When the client was built, it has some default name, which is probably al110c. When no client.cfg is present, it will write a new one with that library name. Then, if it successfully connects to the server, it will learn the current library name (in this case libemt2.so), rewrite the name in the client.cfg file, and try to download it.

I've seen a similar problem to what you are talking about for a system in which the client is not able to write to disk. The client writes to disk through the cosm client/server library, from mithral.com. I've seen this fail for nsf mounted disks, but I don't know why it fails. I wonder if a similar things is happening for the ram disk.

You could check this by removing the client.cfg, running the client, and see if the client.cfg get written properly. If not, it might be getting written to the wrong place -- for example in /, if you have permission to write there. If any of this is going on, I think it's related to the file writing routine in the cosm library.

The linux client should be static, unless you are running on a 64 bit machine.

[rbutcher]

Thanks for taking the time to explain... turns out this box can only download chunks of about 512kb at a time... perhaps a problem with the ethernet hub. Once I got libemt2c.so onto the ramdisk via cd and client.cfg adjusted to use it, the box is now happily banging away. cheers. Rod