Hi, I'm trying to get FC6 working on a diskless system. I hope this is the correct list to discuss this topic, if not please ignore this message. As I mentioned, I'm trying to get FC6 to work in a diskless system. To do this I first installed FC6 in a VMware (with disk). I'm using that as the "example" system. I'm following the instructions provided in the documentation of the system-config-netboot-0.1.41-1.FC6 package. After rsyncing over the files to the NFS server, setting up DHCP and TFTP servers it's time for the first attempt. The diskless client is a vmware, confgured to boot over the network (PXE). With the first attempt, the system stops with the following error: "Mounting rot filesystem: /nfsroots/fc6-diskless/root from 192.168.254.254 mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on 192.168.254.254:/nfsroots/fc6-diskless/root, missing codepage r other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so." For screenshot see: http://eijk.homelinux.org/~stefan/fc-diskless/1.jpg As mentioned in http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Diskless_Frontend#Redhat_and_Fedora_Core /sbin/mount.nfs is missing in the initrd.img. This patch adds it (although I'm not sure if mount.nfs4 should be added too): # diff -ur /usr/share/system-config-netboot/diskless/updateDiskless.orig /usr/share/system-config-netboot/diskless/updateDiskless --- /usr/share/system-config-netboot/diskless/updateDiskless.orig 2007-04-29 23:18:24.000000000 +0200 +++ /usr/share/system-config-netboot/diskless/updateDiskless 2007-04-29 23:18:50.000000000 +0200 @@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ done; #/bin/cp "$ROOT"/usr/share/hwdata/pcitable $MNTPOINT/usr/share/hwdata/ || die; # disklessrc now uses modules.pcimap, not pcitable -BINS="/sbin/busybox.anaconda /sbin/insmod /sbin/modprobe /sbin/rmmod /sbin/dhclient /bin/bash /bin/mount /sbin/route /sbin/ip /usr/bin/expr /sbin/lspci /sbin/ifconfig /sbin/consoletype /sbin/pivot_root /bin/hostname /bin/domainname /usr/bin/host" +BINS="/sbin/busybox.anaconda /sbin/insmod /sbin/modprobe /sbin/rmmod /sbin/dhclient /bin/bash /bin/mount /sbin/mount.nfs /sbin/mount.nfs4 /sbin/route /sbin/ip /usr/bin/expr /sbin/lspci /sbin/ifconfig /sbin/consoletype /sbin/pivot_root /bin/hostname /bin/domainname /usr/bin/host" # Set up links to all the busybox functions - # may be different for different versions of busybox! if [ ! -e $ROOT/sbin/busybox.anaconda ]; then 2nd attempt ended with it complaining that it couldn't pivot_root. Seems that /.oldroot directory isn't created. For screenshot see: http://eijk.homelinux.org/~stefan/fc-diskless/2.jpg After making that directory it also complains that /.snapshot isn't made either. Starting udev takes ages, http://eijk.homelinux.org/~stefan/fc-diskless/3.jpg I didn't wait for it to finish, just made the directory on the NFS server and reset the vmware. http://eijk.homelinux.org/~stefan/fc-diskless/4.jpg After re-reading the .html pages in /usr/share/doc/system-config-netboot-0.1.41/ I followed the instructions to create a client. Changed the pxe config to reflect this. label fc6 KERNEL vmlinuz APPEND initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/ram0 init=disklessrc NFSROOT=192.168.254.254:/nfsroots/fc6-diskless ramdisk_size=19102 ETHERNET=eth0 SNAPSHOT=fc6-diskless resulting in this: http://eijk.homelinux.org/~stefan/fc-diskless/5.jpg added "ramdisk_blocksize=1024", from http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Diskless_Frontend#Redhat_and_Fedora_Core The end result is a FC6 diskless client that hangs on starting udev. http://eijk.homelinux.org/~stefan/fc-diskless/6.jpg I'm wondering what I've missed in the documentation and what I'm doing wrong. I feel that I'm already correcting too many things myself --> this stuff should be made in a way that it just works and is trivial to set up. As the package version/release is still the same in rawhide, I guess this same package is going to be shipped with FC7. What would be the best way to move forward? Shall I start with filing some bugreports? Or is this not the right time to do so (freeze for fc7)? with kind regards, Stefan van der Eijk
