On 4/30/07, Stefan van der Eijk <stefan@xxxxxxx> wrote:
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
Have you considered using Linux Terminal Server, http://sourceforge.net/projects/ltsp/ ?
