FC6 (&7) netboot

[Kam Leo]

On 4/30/07, Stefan van der Eijk <stefan at eijk.nu> 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/ ?