Some progress today towards setting up an isolated subnet for testing the new front-ends. I was able to recover the fb1 backup disk using the Rescatux disk-rescue utility and successfully booted an fb1 clone on the subnet. This machine will function as the boot server and DAQ server for the front-ends under test. (None of these machines are connected to the Martian network or, currently, even the outside Internet.)

Despite the success with the framebuilder, front-ends cannot yet be booted locally because we are still missing the DHCP and FTP servers required for network booting. On the Martian net, these processes are running not on fb1 but on chiara. And to be able to compile and run models later in the testing, we will need the contents of the /opt/rtcds directory also hosted on chiara.

For these reasons, I think it will be easiest to create another clone of chiara to run on the subnet. There is a backup disk of chiara and I attempted to boot it on one of the LLO front-ends, but without success. The repair tool I used to recover the fb1 disk does not find a problem with the chiara disk. However, the chiara disk is an external USB drive, so I suspect there could be a compatibility problem with these old (~2010) machines. Some of them don't even recognize USB keyboards pre-boot-up. I may try booting the USB drive from a newer computer.

Edit: I removed one of the new, unused Supermicros from the 1Y2 rack and set it up in the test stand. This newer machine is able to boot the chiara USB disk without issue. Next time I'll continue with the networking setup.