[mythtv-users] Problems with netboot on Fedora Core 6, Kernel 2.6.20

Jeff Coffler jeff-list-mythusers at taltos.com
Sun Apr 15 17:17:22 UTC 2007


Hi folks,

I thought I'd post here before trying to find some relevant 
Fedora-specific mailing lists.

I successfully have a Myth frontend doing a diskless netboot on kernel 
2.6.19-1.2911.  The MythTV wiki pages (in particular, page:

    
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Diskless_Frontend#Redhat_and_Fedora_Core

was instrumental in getting this working.  I've been netbooting 
successfully for months.

Well, I'm now trying to get kernel 2.6.20 to fly with netboot, and I'm 
having a heck of a time.  I've tried two kernels: 2.6.20-1.2933 and 
2.6.20-1.2944. Problems are identical with both of those.

The problem: The disklessrc boot script isn't properly mounting the 
snapshot file system (near as I can tell).

I've added some debugging / diagnostics to the script, and I believe I 
understand the problem better, but not how to solve it.

The first problem: the /.snapshot file system appears to not be mounted 
(the wiki discussed it getting mounted RO, but I think it's not being 
mounted at all).  The "normal" mount in the disklessrc fails:

    mount -t nfs $NFS_IP:${NFS_DIR}/snapshot /.snapshot -o rw,nolock

This fails because the / file system is mounted read-only, and I can't 
write to the mtab file.  So, I added a -n to the mount statement.

Near as I can tell, the mount is ignored.  If, after doing the mount 
with a -n, I do a "df" (in disklessrc - the system isn't "up" yet), the 
/.snapshot file system is not listed.

If I remount the file system as per the wiki:

    mount -o remount,rw /.snapshot

This appears to fail as well (it complains that /.snapshot isn't in the 
/etc/fstab or /etc/mtab files; I tried adding to /etc/fstab, but I don't 
believe that file is looked at this early in the boot sequence).

Bottom line: The /.snapshot area is NOT mounted properly, and I can't 
get the system to come up.

If I export the root file system on the server as RW rather than RO, 
then the system comes up fine.  But having a separate root area per 
client is sort of pointless from an ease-of-maintenance perspective.  
I'd really like to get the snapshots working again.

I've googled, but not found anything relevant.

Anybody have any ideas?

    Thanks!

    -- Jeff


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