Rlogin to workstation with lowest load average...

[Erik Talvola]

  I am involved in a project to allow people from any system on campus
here at Berkeley to rlogin to a network of workstations (Sun 3/50's), and
have them automatically be put onto the station with the lowest load
average.  I.E., right now, they must give a name of an actual workstation,
and they get logged on there.  However, since these machines are heavily
used for nasty things like Scheme and Saber-C, one would prefer to logon
to a system which is not being used.  

  The network is set up with 60 Suns split among 4 servers.  Anyone can
log into any one of the 60 Suns, and depending on his account, his files
will be on one of the 4 servers.  So, then, it would also be nice for 
the rlogin to be able to figure out which server the account is on, and 
choose one of those 15 stations, and not one of the whole 60 (this is easy
- the server is determined by a number in the login-name).

  Right now, I have a 2-step login process, automated by a short shell
script.  One can 'telnet widow 5001' to get the lowest station on the
first server, port 5002 for the second, etc.  Then, this name is just
passed in an rlogin command.  So far, this seems to work fine, but it
would be nicer if rlogin could do it automatically.

  The way to do this would seem to be to have a subdomain set up under
the main address of the network (web.berkeley.edu).  This way, one could
say 'rlogin web1.web.berkeley.edu', and he would be logged into the lowest
loaded station on the first server.  

  The question I have is how I would go about setting this up.  I have been
looking at the RFC's (I have had no prior experience in setting up domains),
but I haven't seen any information on how to set up something which must
call a program to set an address, instead of looking it up in a table.

  So, if anyone has worked on something similar to this, please let me know.
If you haven't, but know something about how I would go about this, also
please let me know.  Many thanks for any responses.

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Erik Talvola               | "It's just what we need... a colossal negative 
talvola at cory.berkeley.edu  | space wedgie of great power coming right at us
..!ucbvax!cory!talvola    | at warp speed." -- Star Drek