[mythtv-users] Network Booting

Jason G sredni.vashtar at comcast.net
Tue Feb 3 12:46:30 EST 2004


Hi Andy,

I'm doing a network boot of my system via NFS.  It's working quite well over
100-mbit network.

My basic setup is that I have a main server that provides data storage (TV,
Video, MP3), NFS, DNS, DHCPd, MySQL, etc.  This server does not run any myth
backend on it, though.

I had originally planned to use a compact flash to IDE adapter to put a
linux kernel on that would go and fetch the root filesystem via NFS.  This
idea was probably going to work, but I discovered part way through that
process that the motherboard (Asus P4G8X) I had purchased supports PXE
booting.  This is the process that I went for in the end.  Basically, PXE is
built into the BIOS and essentially makes the system POST, then it gets an
IP address via DHCP.  At this point, it issues a cry for help by attempting
to load a kernel.  Once it gets this, it boots almost the same as it would
with a local disk.

I've written up some of my configuration/experiences here:
http://home.comcast.net/~sredni.vashtar/mythtv/myth.html

Information about PXE booting linux can be found here:
http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php  It was fairly easy and straightforward to
setup, and I don't think that I needed to compile anything (the only file I
used from the syslinux/pxelinux distribution was pxelinux.0, which is
prebuilt for you).

Unfortunately, I don't know how well all this will work on the laptops it
sounds like you're going to use.  If they have a network boot option in the
BIOS, you could be nearly all set.  If not, I'm not sure what you'd be able
to do.  You _might_ be able to boot from a PCMCIA->CompactFlash adapter, but
I don't know if that's possible.  The adapter's certainly exist, but I don't
know if they're bootable.

Hope this information is helpful,
Jason



Andy Laurence wrote:
> I've had a search through the archives, and the only reference to
> network booting I can find is MiniMyth (LinPVR.org).  This seems to
> be biased to the MiniITX boards.  I've got a project I'm in the
> process of gathering data for.  Basically, I want to equip each room
> of my house with a TFT to display TV (from Tivo), play music, and
> the like.  Everything MythTV does!  I plan to use a low-spec server
> in my rack to run the backend, and possibly house a Hauppage 350
> card in the future.  This server is also going to run Misterhouse
> for home automation tasks, but that's another story!
>
> Anyway, for the front ends, I plan to use some PII laptops.  They
> should be capable of playing video (I used to watch DivX on a PII
> 333MHz machine), and are in the chucking out pile in the workshop,
> hence the right price!  As I don't want a huge noise in each room,
> and the PCs are all identical, I plan to network boot them.  The
> problem here is that network booting doesn't seem to be well
> documented, and I'm hardly a Linux expert (I get no experience at
> work, and time at home is limited).  Looking at the latest release
> of MythTV from the weekend, it seems it supports framebuffer mode.
> It strikes me that this could be used to create a generic front end
> network boot kit, as I believe framebuffer mode is driver
> independent.
>
> Am I heading in the right direction?  Can anyone point me to a
> simple howto for network booting?  <hopeful mode> Has anyone
> started, or is about to start a similar project? </hopeful>
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
> --
> http://ha.andylaurence.co.uk



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