Hardware Setup & Sequential Boot Guide

1. Physical Connectivity (The Backbone)

Before powering anything on, ensure your network topology is correct:

The Switch: Connect your 5-port or 8-port Gigabit switch to power.
The Master (Pi 5): Connect the Pi 5 Ethernet port to the switch.
The Computer: Connect your laptop/desktop Ethernet port to the same switch.
The Workers (Pi 3s): Plug Ethernet cables into all Pi 3s and connect them to the switch, but do not plug in their power cables yet.

2. Phase One: Establishing the Master

Power on the Pi 5.
Wait approximately 60 seconds for the OS to initialize and the DHCP/NFS services to start.
Verify Access: From your computer, try to SSH into the Master:
```
ssh cc123@192.168.1.104
```
Crucial Check: Ensure the Pi 5 has the correct time. If the Master's time is wrong, the whole cluster will fail.
```
date
```

Time is Critical

If the Master's time is wrong, the whole cluster will fail. Verify with date before proceeding.

3. Phase Two: Sequential Worker Boot

Avoid Deadlock

The Pi 3s have no local storage; they "read" their entire OS over the wire from the Pi 5. If you power them all at once, the Pi 5's Ethernet bandwidth and SD card/SSD read speed will choke, causing some Pis to fail to boot.

Follow this procedure:

Plug in Worker 1: Wait for the green "ACT" LED on the Pi 3 to start flickering steadily.
Verify: On the Pi 5, run:
```
ping worker1
```
Once you get a response, move to the next.
Repeat: Plug in Worker 2, wait 30 seconds, verify, then Worker 3, and so on.

Tip

Waiting 30–45 seconds between each Pi allows the previous one to finish the "heavy" part of the boot process (loading the kernel and systemd).