[mythtv-users] Another use for diskless MythTV (Network Booting)

[Larry Matter]

> How are you getting the diskless image to work with the via epia. I
> thought you  had to have the nic driver compiled in the kernel to get it
> to boot with root file system on nfs?

I'm not mounting the root over nfs anymore.  I load the whole root
filesystem into a (cramfs) ramdisk.  The ramdisk consumes a little over
20M, and I have 256M on the system so no worries.

> And the nic driver for the epia is
> a binary module right?

Nope, it's part of the kernel (at least, it's in the -ac kernel I'm using).

> I ran into that problem trying to get my nforce based frontend to run
> diskless. It wouldn't cause the nvidia nic card driver is a module and
> won't compile in the kernel. Let me know how you solved this!

If the nvidia nic card has PXE, then you can do this without the nic
driver compiled into the kernel.  Use PXELinux, which will download the
ramdisk over the net and load it into memory for you.  Then your startup
scripts can load the nic module and use a dhcp client to configure
everything.

If you still wanted to use root-over-nfs, then you may be able to play
some games with an initial ramdisk that loads the nic driver module and
then chroot's into your nfs mounted rootfs, but I haven't really thought
that approach through.

You might be able to use etherboot if PXE doesn't work out, but I don't
know much about etherboot.

I've mentioned it before but in case you missed it, I wrote this article
about net-booting on Via EPIA M: http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=281 .  A
lot of it would be general to using PXE; hope it helps.

Larry


>
> --
>>I am currently working on a root filesystem image that can be loaded
>> over the net and then run mythfrontend (with backend on another
>>machine).
>
>>At the moment it is meant for Via EPIA M series systems, but it could
>> be
>>enhanced to support other systems pretty easily.
>
>>It is based on freevix but I have changed a bunch of stuff.  At this
>> point it is not ready for public consumption, but I hope to have
>>something within a week or two.   I wouldn't have mentioned it yet
>> accept that you asked :-)
>
>>Larry
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