[mythtv-users] FC5 Diskless boot woes

Rich West Rich.West at wesmo.com
Fri Mar 23 15:02:43 UTC 2007


Don Bossung wrote:
>
> I know that this may not be the appropriate forum for this problem, 
> but I am hoping the someone here has had a similar problem as I am 
> getting nowhere fast with other lists and google searches.
>
>  
>
> Here we go.
>
>  
>
> I am using
>
> FC5 2.6.20 x86_64
> the machine is running
> tftpserver 41-1.2.1
> dhcp 11:3.0.3-28
> system-config-netboot 1.40-1.FC5
>
> Mythtv 0.20-154
>
>  
>
> The above is my backend and I am trying to setup a diskless 
> workstation to use as a frontend.
>
>  
>
> On the backend I:
>
> Followed the system-config-netboot docs at 
> /usr/share/doc/system-config-netboot-1.40-1 using seciton 2 of this 
> document steps 1-6
>
> For my setup machine I installed vmware server 1.02 on the above box 
> and then setup a FC5 vm from cd iso with text install and no 
> additional packages. Post install I used yum to update and then group 
> install X Desktop Enviroment and KDE (K Desktop Environment) and 
> MythtvFrontend.
>
> After following the docs above I booted the remote machine (Celeron D 
> 2.88 1G RAM no drives) The pxe boot and kernel load goes fine until 
> the following error occurs:
>
> RAMDIKSK: Compressed image found at block 0
> EXT2-fs: blocksize too small for device
> attempt to access beyond end of device
> ram0: rw=0, want=18446744056529682440, limit=44184
> isofs_fill_super: bread failed, dev=ram0, iso_blknum=17, block=2147483648
> No filesystem could mount root, tried: ext2 iso9660
> Kernel panic - not synching: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 
> unknown-block(1,0)
>
> I don't get why so many blocks (18 pentillion???) are being requested. 
> I don't think dhcp/tftp is the culprit as I am getting the kernel. 
> Could it be that I used vmware as the base for creating the base image 
> used by netboot on the remote machine?
>
>  
>
> BTW, I used the vmlinuz and initrd.img from the Fedora Core 5 dvd and 
> was able to load that with no problem using the same setup.
>
> Again, I know I am way off topic here, but if you have any ideas, let 
> me know.
>

I'll be the one to follow this up with a "me too" type of post, which 
many on the list despise.  However, I think it is worth stating that you 
are not alone in the scenario.

I noticed the same problem and fought with it for a couple of nights, 
playing with the "ramdisk_size=" and "ramdisk_blocksize=" kernel 
arguments within the PXE config to adjust things.  I got past that 
particular error with :
    append  initrd=MythTV4/initrd.img root=/dev/ram0 init=/disklessrc 
NFSROOT=192.168.56.10:/export/diskless/mythtv4 ramdisk_size=21912 
ETHERNET=eth0 SNAPSHOT=mythtv4  ramdisk_blocksize=1024 ip=dhcp

While that got me past the error, I hit another show-stopper error a 
couple of lines further down (where it is supposed to mount the 
filesystems and execute /disklessrc and S01diskless), and that is where 
I tossed in the towel.  I figured I would work on upgrading all of the 
systems to FC6 and address the diskless setup again.

-Rich


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