[mythtv-users] Fedora-based diskless frontends -- anybody have one working?

Sean Cier scier at PostHorizon.com
Wed Jan 11 19:02:53 UTC 2006


I'm wondering if anybody's successfully set up a Fedora-based diskless 
frontend booting over the network.  I'm trying to get an ATRPMS-based 
(pretty much Jarod's-guide-style) FC4 machine booting up over the net and 
mounting the root read/write over NFS -- not because I don't have a spare 
drive, but because it's in an environment which has already killed one drive 
because of heat issues.  I've gotten it booting over PXE, retrieving the 
kernel (via DHCP, TFTP, and PXELinux), and booting *that* -- actually, that 
part was surprisingly easy -- but I can't get it to the point of 
NFS-mounting the root drive.  I've tried playing with DHCP and pxelinux.cfg 
parameters, and even inserted nfs.ko (and its dependencies, sunrpc.ko and 
lockd.ko) and forcedeth.ko (my network driver) in the initrd, and played 
around with the "init" script in the initrd every which way from Tuesday, 
but can't seem to get a configuration that doesn't result in a kernel panic 
when it can't find its root (the latest is that it's reporting an RPC 101 
error -- though I have to insert sleeps in the init script just so I can 
have time to read the error messages on the TV, which is annoying).

I've been over the archives and the rest of the 'net trying to get this to 
work.  There seem to be 1000 different things that 1000 different people 
recommend, every one is different, and most are rather outdated -- and none 
match a modern FC4 system, or gloss over the details, or at least don't work 
for me, or are intended for a different purpose.  I can't get 
system-config-netboot (1.0.34) to work on my system, and I haven't heard any 
success stories with that anyhow.

I'll recompile the kernel if necessary, though I'd love to avoid that just 
to make maintenance easier in the future (since it's already a headache to 
maintain the house's systems, and ideally I'd like to have all 3 primary 
frontends running diskless); for that matter, it'd be wonderful to avoid 
manually modifying initrd every time I upgrade kernels, though that's 
probably a lost cause.

So -- any diskless Fedora success stories?  If so, could you describe what's 
in your pxelinux.cfg, dhcpd.conf, and initrd -- or what else you did to get 
it working?

-spc

-- 
  /-                 Sean Cier <scier at PostHorizon.com>                  -\
( Everyone should believe in something; I believe I'll have another pint )
  \-                 http://www.PostHorizon.com/scier                   -/


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