[mythtv-users] Network Booting

[Paul Catchpole]

I'm using etherboot on a floppy to boot my PII/350 frontend. They're using
2.4.21 and autoconfig / DHCP to get an IP and mouting root and swap over
NFS...

The distribution was the main hassle - it's acutally a copy of a standard
RH9 install from the frontend machine when it had hard drives, the config
files (/etc and more) have been stripped out to enable more than one
frontend to boot using the same fs (it's mounted RW) and it's using some
custom rc. scripts that are from core linux (which I gave up with). 

Feel free to contact me off-list about it if this is o/t and you want any
copies of the scripts etc...

The frontends have a full distribution on them so they can build mythtv from
CVS...



Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Jason G
Sent: 03 February 2004 19:10
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Network Booting

>> My basic setup is that I have a main server that provides data 
>> storage (TV, Video, MP3), NFS, DNS, DHCPd, MySQL, etc.  This server 
>> does not run any myth backend on it, though.
>
> OK.  Where is your backend running?

I have my frontend and backend on the same box.  It's a 2GHz celeron system,
with a PVR-350, so it doesn't really see any appreciable load.

> I've yet to find a laptop that will boot from a PCMCIA>CF adapter.
> All the laptops have floppy drives, so I was intending to emulate a 
> PXE boot with a boot floppy.  This should get a DHCP address, and 
> download a kernel from what I'm told.  I'm a little unsure of exactly 
> how it'll work, but we shall see, or not!  I've also spotted a couple 
> of rack-mount servers in the corner of the workshop, which should do 
> nicely for a backend, and my new web/mail server.  I'll see if they're 
> being skipped soon!  Thanks for the info.

I don't think that you'd have any trouble doing a floppy boot.  You probably
won't even need to use PXE/Sys linux in that case.  Just build a kernel with
the "root over NFS" option built in and once it knows where the NFS root is,
it should just go.  This was basically going to be my plan for with the CF
adapter until I realized just what PXE would do for me.

Since you're going to be using NFS, pay attention to the section on the URL
I sent earlier about the mount and export options.  Those turned out to be
more important that I had expected.  I was getting _really_ frustrated about
"Stale NFS File Handle" errors.  They seem to have been resolved.  I'll be
adding a quick update soon to include the details of my /etc/exports file so
things are completely clear about what I've done.

Jason