PlumpOS is a CD-based GNU/Linux/openMosix mini-flavor designed to allow users to quickly, or temporarily, add nodes to an openMosix cluster.

How does it work?
First of all, set up your machine's BIOS in order to make it boot from CD. Check your motherboard's manual to see how to set up this. Upon booting up you will receive a prompt to boot PlumpOS using a specific kernel; several ones have been provided for you but, you also have the option of providing your own kernel + modules. The boot menu should tell you all the kernels available for you to use; simply type the name of one (and optionally some kernel arguments) and press return/enter.

At boot-time, PlumpOS will auto-probe for network cards and, if any gets detected, it'll try and configure them via DHCP. If successful, it will fire up omdiscd on each interface a DHCP lease is received on.

Requirements
As the purpose of PlumpOS is to add nodes to a cluster, it is assumed that you already have a running openMosix cluster -- or perhaps only a single openMosix node -- from which you will be initiating jobs. All machines in the cluster must conform to the following requirements:

• PlumpOS Machine(s) 586+ CPU
• bootable CD-ROM drive
• Network Interface Card
• Between 32M and 128M of RAM
• Master Machine(s) GNU/Linux/openMosix kernel (same version as all the PlumpOS kernel you are booting on the Child/Slave PlumpOS Machine(s))
• Network Environment Running DHCP server (if you don't, or won't, run DHCP, you can still manually configure your system: simply go to each PlumpOS machine and enter in your desired configuration information with the supplied networking tools. Using DHCP is highly recommended however, and will greatly simplify your life in the long run

The following network modules are present in most if not all of the supplied kernels' modules tarball (in /kernels/KERNELNAME/modules.tgz), although not all support auto-probing; if you don't see support for your card in this list, then PlumpOS will not work for you.

3c501.o, 3c503.o, 3c505.o, 3c507.o, 3c509.o, 3c515.o, 3c59x.o, 8139cp.o, 8139too.o, 82596.o, ac3200.o, acenic.o, aironet4500_card.o, aironet4500_core.o, aironet4500_proc.o, arlan-proc.o, arlan.o, at1700.o, bsd_comp.o, cs89x0.o, de4x5.o, depca.o, dgrs.o, dl2k.o, dmfe.o, dummy.o, e100/e100.o, e1000/e1000.o, e2100.o, eepro.o, eepro100.o, eexpress.o, epic100.o, eth16i.o, ewrk3.o, fealnx.o, hamachi.o, hp-plus.o, hp.o, hp100.o, lance.o, lp486e.o, mii.o, natsemi.o, ne.o, ne2k-pci.o, ni5010.o, ni52.o, ni65.o, ns83820.o, pcmcia, pcnet32.o, ppp_async.o, ppp_deflate.o, ppp_generic.o, ppp_synctty.o, pppoe.o, pppox.o, sis900.o, sk98lin/sk98lin.o, slhc.o, smc-ultra.o, smc9194.o, starfire.o, strip.o, sundance.o, sungem.o, sunhme.o, tc35815.o, tg3.o, tlan.o, tokenring/{3c359.o abyss.o ibmtr.o lanstreamer.o olympic.o smctr.o tms380tr.o tmsisa.o tmspci.o}, tulip/tulip.o, via-rhine.o, wavelan.o, wd.o, winbond-840.o, wireless/{airo.o airo_cs.o hermes.o orinoco.o orinoco_cs.o orinoco_pci.o orinoco_plx.o}, yellowfin.o

Please also note that PlumpOS may not work on a laptop: it definitely doesn't support PCMCIA cards (yet), and will probably not configure openMosix properly if your machine contains multiple connected Ethernet adapters. This is a temporary limitation of the configuration scripts, and should be resolved in future releases.