[mythtv-users] Questions on PXE booting a frontend

[David Asher]

> Thanks to everyone so far for the advice.  I don't want to give up
> quite so easily, so I'll see if I can add the right stuff to my initrd
> image to achieve an NFS root for a normal non-PXE boot.  It seems like
> I need that to be reliable anyway before adding the PXE part.

I generally shutdown the frontends if rebooting the backend -- just  
seems like a good idea -- though in principle it isn't required.  I  
ALWAYS shutdown the frontends if updating the diskless image on the  
backend.

Depending on how attached you are to MythDora, another option is  
switching to Mythbuntu and a custom firmware on your router.  The  
mythbuntu-control-centre (MCC) comes with easy options to build a  
diskless image and set everything up on the backend to serve the image  
to a diskless frontend.  I've run both dd-wrt and tomato firmware on  
my router and they provide the mechanism to give the pxeboot  
information to the frontend on boot.  Alternatively you could disable  
the DCHP server on the router and use the DCHP server MythBuntu can  
provide (again by a simple checkbox in MCC, though I've never used  
this option).

The only downside I've seen with this approach is on a upgrade from a  
major Mythbuntu version (8.10 to 9.04 for example), upgrading the  
diskless image is always a crapshoot, it seems it would be better to  
delete the image and recreate -- which is a pain depending on how much  
customization you do to the standard Mythbuntu diskless image.  (Oh,  
there's also a small bug in the diskless client package in 8.10 and  
9.04 which causes the frontend to hang on shutdown, but that's easily  
fixed with a script change)

For ease of setup Mythbuntu's diskless stuff is really quite impressive.