[mythtv-users] Cheap frontend for HD

[Jim Stichnoth]

On Sun, Jun 28, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Jim Stichnoth <stichnot at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 11:04 AM, Calvin Dodge <caldodge at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Right now I'd say the answer is "no, it's not worth it", given that
>> Newegg currently has the 32G/2G ECS Liva on sale for $79.99.
>>
>> Thanks for that hot tip.  For $80 I couldn't resist buying one to try out.
>
> After some fiddling, I got it to PXE-boot Ubuntu 14.04 like the other
> ION-based frontends.  Strangely, it works for about 3-4 minutes after
> downloading the initrd.img file before it gets into the actual boot
> process.  But once it's running mythfrontend, it's just as responsive as
> the ION frontends.
>

Has anyone gotten this ECS Liva to PXE-boot at a reasonable speed?  Or
solved similar slow-PXE-boot problems for other Linux systems?

It looks like the tftp download of the kernel and initrd files is extremely
slow.  Downloading syslinux.efi (200KB) is fast enough, as is ldlinux.e64
(140KB).  The vmlinuz file is 6.3MB and appears to take about 11 seconds to
download.  The initrd.img file is almost 20MB and appears to take about 200
seconds (!) to download.  But once the system boots, the network is plenty
fast - more than 500 Mb/s with scp.  Here are relevant server logs:

Jun 30 07:32:07 mythmaster dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from b8:ae:ed:32:af:86 via
eth0
Jun 30 07:32:07 mythmaster dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 192.168.0.210 to
b8:ae:ed:32:af:86 via eth0
Jun 30 07:32:10 mythmaster dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.0.210
(192.168.0.216) from b8:ae:ed:32:af:86 via eth0
Jun 30 07:32:10 mythmaster dhcpd: DHCPACK on 192.168.0.210 to
b8:ae:ed:32:af:86 via eth0
Jun 30 07:32:10 mythmaster in.tftpd[32686]: RRQ from ::ffff:192.168.0.210
filename syslinux.efi
Jun 30 07:32:10 mythmaster in.tftpd[32686]: tftp: client does not accept
options
Jun 30 07:32:10 mythmaster in.tftpd[32687]: RRQ from ::ffff:192.168.0.210
filename syslinux.efi
Jun 30 07:32:10 mythmaster in.tftpd[32688]: RRQ from ::ffff:192.168.0.210
filename ldlinux.e64
Jun 30 07:32:10 mythmaster in.tftpd[32689]: RRQ from ::ffff:192.168.0.210
filename pxelinux.cfg/01-b8-ae-ed-32-af-86
Jun 30 07:32:10 mythmaster in.tftpd[32690]: RRQ from ::ffff:192.168.0.210
filename vmlinuz-3.16.0-36-generic
Jun 30 07:32:21 mythmaster in.tftpd[32691]: RRQ from ::ffff:192.168.0.210
filename initrd.img-3.16.0-36-generic
Jun 30 07:35:45 mythmaster dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from b8:ae:ed:32:af:86 via
eth0
Jun 30 07:35:45 mythmaster dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 192.168.0.210 to
b8:ae:ed:32:af:86 via eth0
Jun 30 07:35:45 mythmaster dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 192.168.0.210
(192.168.0.216) from b8:ae:ed:32:af:86 via eth0
Jun 30 07:35:45 mythmaster dhcpd: DHCPACK on 192.168.0.210 to
b8:ae:ed:32:af:86 via eth0

My other non-UEFI frontends use pxelinux.0 for PXE booting, which loads
vmlinux and initrd.img in just a few seconds.  Since the ECS Liva requires
UEFI booting, I downloaded syslinux-6.03 and
grabbed syslinux-6.03/efi64/efi/syslinux.efi
and syslinux-6.03/efi64/com32/elflink/ldlinux/ldlinux.e64.

Any ideas, or good experience reports?

Jim
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20150630/6905f4d2/attachment.html>