[Fedora-livecd-list] Running LiveCD from network?

[Jerry Vonau]

Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-01-28 at 10:59 -0600, Jerry Vonau wrote:
>> Cain, Brian (GE Healthcare) wrote:
>>>> I have a PXE boot environment set up for installing Fedora/RHEL.  Has
>>>> anyone looked at making the LiveCD loadable from the network?  If not,
>>>> are there any pointers that might help?
>>> Mohammed Khan did some work a while back.  I wasn't able to get it to
>>> work (failed at the pivot root), but I dig very deep on it.  It works
>>> for him, so it's worth looking at.
>>>
>>> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-livecd-list/2007-June/msg00021.ht
>>> ml
>>>
>> I'm happy someone else thinks like me. I posted to the anaconda list, a 
>> hack using nsf as the storage point for the live image, but that only 
>> did an install.(July/Aug 07). If that is what you want, it works. I'm 
>> currently playing around with anaconda's loader to see if I can get that 
>> to run the livecd, seems to me like a good starting point, with a gui 
>> for dmc's persistent work. With anaconda's hardware detection, I'm 
>> hoping to make a portable persistent live-usb disk. I've been (very) 
>> slowly porting the livecd's initrd parts to C code for anaconda's 
>> loader. I've got a mix of shell and C that currently can mount the 
>> livecd, and use that in place of the stage2.img file. (boy is it hard to 
>> keep up with some of the changes going on) Next is to get the run-init 
>> part to work without freaking out anaconda. Any interested?
> 
> Rather than hijacking anaconda pieces (and the doom that is the anaconda
> initrd), the better approach is probably to get to where we can use the
> standard mkinitrd pieces to build the live initrd.  This likely is going
> to involve switching the initrd over to using bash as opposed to nash as
> its interpreter.  I started some work in this area, but realistically,
> it's going to take some large-ish changes.

But I like anaconda's initrd, ;-) Cool, that is a whole pile less 
convoluted that playing in C, looking forward to your progress. Got an 
svn sandbox somewhere?

Jerry