[mythtv-users] Netboot <> FC2&3

PAUL WILLIAMSON pwilliamson at mandtbank.com
Tue Dec 21 01:40:24 UTC 2004



>>> brad+myth at templetons.com 12/20/2004 6:48:01 PM >>>
<snip>

>I also gave up for now, as I was getting hangs when starting X.  (You
>are running XFree86 under Fedora instead of X.org?)
>
I'm running whatever comes with stock FC3.  I followed Jarod's 
guide and have a fully functioning frontend when booting from 
the local drive.  Then I followed the guide at redhat for doing a 
netboot configuration.  When I changed the pc to do the netboot, 
and I got a kernel panic.  It goes by so fast, but it says something 
about the problem may be xfree86 trying to access something 
in the hardware layer directly.  The only way I can bring this 
into my home theater is if it is totally quiet.  Running from a hard 
disk is not quiet.  Although I'm also cheap, so I don't want to 
but any more hardware (like etherboot rom or usb interface + 
usb thumbdrive) to get this working.  Netboot should work.

>There are several ways to do a net boot:
>
>    a) Full ethernet boot, PXE or etherboot -- no disk at all.  Can
be
>	hard to set up.

It should be easy.  It is fairly easy on Solaris (I have lots of these

at work) and Red Hat was easy at one point...but doesn't work now.

>    b) Boot from local disk but have root filesystem on NFS --
generally
>	easier to set up, good idea if you have an old small disk you
>	don't use any more that can be spun down later.   You can boot
>        this way from CD/DVD-ROM, but must pull the disk later if you
>	want to play or rip disks.

No desire to rip or play disks.  Don't even have a CD or DVD drive 
in this frontend machine.  Just an old, relatively loud hard drive.


>    c) Boot from local disk, then remount filesystems, spin down
disk:
>	Problem:  Existing processes, like init and others, have files
>	open on the boot filesystem.  If they try to access them, the
>	disk will spin up again.

This is what I was thinking, but after googling around, deciding
against 
it because of the possibility of the drive spinning up occasionally.

>    d) Boot from flash card with tiny root filesystem, NFS mount
>       the rest of the filesystem.   Silent and low power.   Flash
>       drives are cheap.  USB thumb drive may be easiest if you can
>       boot from that, or you can get IDE/flash adapters for cheap.

No usb interface on the case, but there is a usb header on the 
motherboard.  Already more than I want to do vs. doing pxelinux.

>Most people focus on (a) because the want totally diskless but in
fact
>the others may be easier and more flexible.   Notably the IDE flash
drive
>will work even on ancient systems that can't ethernet boot.  Buying
an
>etherboot room for your network card seem silly in comparison with
the
>price of flash these days.

I'm with the (a) people.  No interest in buying a boot rom.  I have 
pxelinux working 



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