[mythtv-users] Diskless Front End (again)

[James Warden]

Hi Rich,

I am not sure whether FC6 needs a special setup to be netbooted but I had some weird issue the very 1st time I had to netboot my debian based client. PXE worked, kernel loaded, but then, X would not start. There was also a freaky message about fstab and fsck, and that the mount was read-only (sounds very similar to your issue). I simply forgot to modify the /<nfs-share-root-for-diskless-client>/etc/fstab on the NFS server. I removed everything that had to do with the client local HD, added a /dev/nfs entry pointing to the NFS share holding the root of the diskless client, and a few /var/<some-stuff> entries mounted on /dev/ramX (X being 1, 2, ,3, etc).

Once I modified the fstab, the netboot was successful :)
I am not at home so I cannot opy/paste my diskless client's fstab but it gives you an idea of the problem I had and fixed.

J.



Rich West <Rich.West at wesmo.com> wrote: Neil Sedger wrote:
> <..snip..>
>> o It does generate an error regarding fstab being ro during startup, and
>> it then hangs for ~2mins at starting /sbin/init
>>     
>
> fstab should be in the snapshot area...
>
> Mine sits at /sbin/init for about 2 mins too. Not sure what its doing as 
> there's no output! It doesn't whinge when its done though, just carries 
> on normally, so maybe this is just how long it takes?
>
>   
>> o It doesn't start any of the local network services (ssh, ntp, etc).
>> o It doesn't allow me to log in as "root" or as "mythtv".  I can't even
>> /bin/su - as either of those users..
>>     
>
> Not sure about those, but fixing the snapshot problem will very probably 
> fix them too. Especially if /etc/passwd and friends are supposed to be 
> in the snapshot and therefore out of date... or if it can't write to /var...
>
>
> What does it say on screen when the snapshot fails?
> Mine has said things like 'dir xxx not found' or 'dir yyy could not be 
> created', mostly because of silly typos by me when editing the 
> 'files.custom' (or whatever its called) file and trying to remove 
> redundant dirs from the 'root' dir on the server...

Just to clarify.. I took the image from a fully functioning FC6
frontend, so, yes, X worked then. :)  You're probably right that the
problem is with the pivot-root or mounting of the individual files over
top of the root filesystem.  The "/.snapshot" directory itself is
getting mounted, but none of the files are being overlayed.

The only noise it generates is in regard to it being unable to write to
fstab.

I guess I will have to dig in to that disklessrc startup script to see
where it might be failing..

-Rich
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