The client is just a p3 800 mhz, equipped only with a matrox g450 with tv out cable and a via rhine network card fitted with a boot prom. The software resides entirely on the server, which runs the dhcp and tftp servers required for netbooting.
Grimmy27 wrote:
Dave,
would you mind providing some more information about your netboot image? Maybe even make the image/ tools available for other people to use?
I currently have a single VDR installation, but want to create a recording only server in my attic, plus use the other machine as my live view system plus VOMP server. Saving a harddisk would be nice... ;-)
Peer Oliver Schmidt wrote:
www.etherboot.org, this web site will make you the rom image, then you need the chip, mine was a 27c16 I think, then a programmer to burn the prom chip. The web site supports most any network card that has a spot for a 28 pin chip, etc.
Dave
Peer Oliver Schmidt wrote:
I used gentoo, the boot rom will request a kernel from a tftp server, and send it to the client, and boot the kernel, so you have to spin up a kernel for that client, you can use the diskless nodes howto at gentoo wiki to get a better idea.
A lot of newer motherboards will use PXE boot, therefore no boot rom needed.
I'm using NFS boot and not tftp. After building the kernel with NFS boot enabled, I do
mkelf-linux --rootdir=/path-to-nfs-root-on-server,nfsvers=3,tcp --ip=dhcp vmlinuz > vmlinuz.nbi
This creates a kernel file bootable by etherboots NFS support. The boot ROM image must have NFS boot enabled. So booting the client requests IP address and boot image name from the DHCP server and gets the kernel using NFS. I use the following dhcpd.conf section for the client:
host the-client-host-name { hardware ethernet 00:10:5a:5a:08:be; fixed-address 192.168.0.2; filename "/boot/vmlinuz.nbi"; server-name "my-server-name"; option routers 192.168.0.1; }
A note for gentoo users: Some months ago I was not able to boot this way because of a dhcpd >= 3.0.3. Downgrading to 3.0.1 has reanimated the thing. May be the problem is fixed now.
Have fun, Bernd
Dave schrieb:
I'm using Fedoras' "system-config-netboot" feature, which creates a network bootable system from a previously installed Fedora OS. It creates a "read only" base system, and r/w mounts parts that need to be written to. That way you can share the read only base between multiple clients, and they only take a few MB for their r/w data. It also creates the pxelinux config, all you have to do is activate it in dhcpd.conf
I'm using a full blown Fedora image as read-only root (1.6GB), and the clients take up about 160MB (with 50MB v4l source and ~70MB vdr sources). The Client doesn't support PXE, so I used a Boot-CD created from www.rom-o-matic.net.
Andreas
Using this saite I've created a boot ROM image for CD boot. This way I need no hard disk and it's possible to use many cheapest network cards without boot PROM support. If you can't boot from CD-ROM you can try a floppy boot image ...
Greetings, Bernd
En/na Bernd Juraschek ha escrit:
If the ethernet card has pxe (most integrated ethernet adapter made in the last 3-4 years, maybe more, do) you don't need to burn a rom or a cd or a floppy, you can piggy back etherboot to pxe or boot directly with pxelinux (this way you can use a normal image, no need to make an nbi image. You still have to prepare a suitable initrd though. Under mandriva there's -or there was- a package called mkinitrd-net to aid in this task).
Bye
Hi,
Am 21.02.2006 um 00:36 schrieb Luca Olivetti:
I'm using etherboot which is booted from my VIA Epia with PXE-enabled bios. This is an snippet from my dhcpd.conf:
host epia1 { hardware ethernet 00:40:63:d3:b7:9a; fixed-address 192.168.0.112; if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "PXEClient" { filename "via-rhine.zpxe"; } else if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "Etherboot" { filename "kernel-epia"; } }
So at first PXE identifys itself als "PXEClient" and the etherboot (via-rhine.zpxe) is loaded via tftp. Etherboot then identifys itself as "Etherboot" and loads the real kernel via tftp, finally. An initrd is _not_ needed if you compile all needed drivers into the kernel :-)
I wish you success! Matthias Huber
Peer Oliver Schmidt pos@theinternet.de wrote:
there is a vdr-NfsRoot-HOWTO on 1541.org
direct link: http://1541.org/public/VdrNfsroot-HOWTO-2.0.txt
best regards ... clemens
-
Andreas Holzhammer - GMX -
Bernd Juraschek -
Clemens Kirchgatterer -
Dave -
Luca Olivetti -
Matthias Huber -
Peer Oliver Schmidt