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Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

(lanparty.house)
1071 points kentonv | 3 comments | 16 Nov 24 15:52 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

I wasn't quite sure if this qualified as "Show HN" given you can't really download it and try it out. However, dang said[0]:

> If it's hardware or something that's not so easy to try out over the internet, find a different way to show how it actually works—a video, for example, or a detailed post with photos.

Hopefully I did that?

Additionally, I've put code and a detailed guide for the netboot computer management setup on GitHub:

https://github.com/kentonv/lanparty

Anyway, if this shouldn't have been Show HN, I apologize!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638

Show context
lostmsu ◴[16 Nov 24 19:39 UTC] No.42158653[source]▶
Do you run Linux or Windows?
replies(1): >>42158762 #
kentonv ◴[16 Nov 24 19:53 UTC] No.42158762[source]▶
The server is Linux but the game machines are Windows.

But I am going to try switching the game machines to Linux at some point. I can't tell you how many times I've run into what were almost showstopper problems with the whole iSCSI netboot thing with Windows, only to get really lucky with some registry hack that worked around it. I'm sure it's going to just stop working at some point. Whereas with Linux I can dig into the stack and make things work however I want.

In fact, in the old Palo Alto house, when I first completed it in 2011, the game stations were Linux for the first six months. In theory it was a better setup because the machines were able to use their local disks for the copy-on-write overlay (this was easy to set up with an initrd script and Device Mapper). With Windows, I haven't figured out how to utilize the local disk at all -- so all the copy-on-write overlays are on the server side, which of course wastes server resources.

Of course, the problem with Linux is game support. We got a long way with WINE in 2011 but there were just a few too many issues. Here in 2024, Linux is ostensibly a much more capable gaming platform, with Steam support, Proton, etc. So maybe it'll work better this time?

Anyway, just another project on the todo list...

replies(1): >>42159812 #
1. tim-- ◴[16 Nov 24 22:10 UTC] No.42159812[source]▶
Have you thought about using Clonezilla and broadcasting out an image using PXE boot?

Would completely bypass the iSCSI setup, and each machine would still get the latest image from your server before the lan party begins.

replies(1): >>42160084 #
2. kentonv ◴[16 Nov 24 22:45 UTC] No.42160084[source]▶
A really neat thing about the netboot setup is it takes zero time to clone the image to all the machines. As soon as I'm done installing updates on one machine, I shut down, run one command that completes instantly, and now I can boot all the machines immediately with that image.

There have been a decent number of times when I actually did this during a party to fix an issue, or between parties just to keep the machines maintained for the family to play with, etc. It'd be hard to do that if I have to spend hours transferring a large image every time.

Aside from the stability issues at boot time, there isn't really a down side. I don't have any problems with load times. So I'm pretty happy with the setup.

replies(1): >>42160413 #
3. tim-- ◴[16 Nov 24 23:17 UTC] No.42160413[source]▶
With multicast, you only need to send the image once to all 20 machines. With 10 gig Ethernet, a 1tb image should be sent in approx 15 minutes.

Also, maybe having a steam cache server and using the local disks as a game store might help with installation of games?

Definitely can see the benefits of the netboot setup, though!