Feature added by: Cameron Blackwood (drkorg) Feature #307900, revision 1 Title: AOE (ata over ethernet) driver on install disk and mkinitrd == no harddisk openSUSE-11.3: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Cameron Blackwood (drkorg) Description: Background: AOE is like iscsi, only simple (8 page spec, module already in kernel) and it works out of the box. Clients need the module (already in kernel) and a couple of support scripts (which just echo into control files). Setting up a vblade server is dead easy and provides you with an easy SAN virtual disk. (The server package is not in the standard pool, but can be found in the factory). What is required: Put the already existing aoe kernel module (about 40Kb) on the install dvd, create dead simple (see below) mkinitrd script, modify shutdown scripts to not hang when root is on a network drive. Why it would be useful: Media pc's, simple cluster nodes, 'thin' terminals. So the scenario would be, plug a small USB stick into a machine and boot the install DVD. Select the usb as /boot and an AOE disk as the rest of your filesystem. Install and you have a hard-disk less machine. Too easy! Proof of concept: See below. I managed to hack this process by installing to a hard disk, copying the filesystem to the AOE disk (making fstab changes) and then making an initrd that used aoe. Once I booted off that image I was hard disk free (except for my /boot which could easily live the previously mentioned USB stick). (I just tested that, you can make an ext2 filesystem on the usb stick and have /boot live there, install grub to it and you dont need the hard disk). Problems: On shutdown, the network service needs to be left on or we dont unmount the root filesystem cleanly (infact the shutdown hangs as you cant access / any more). I had a couple of similar problems playing with nfsroot too. Not sure about this process as I've only just started to look into network root filesystems. (Im sure anyone playing with nfsroot must have a solution to this). You obviously want to disable network stop on shutdown if your root device is a network device. I couldnt see any test in the init.d script for that. How to make a client boot off an AOE disk image (note how simple these scripts are, naturally they might need pollishing by someone who has a better understanding of mkinitrd, but i cant see that being more than 15 mins of someone's time). If these scripts were included in the mkinitrd rpm it would work out of the box. /lib/mkinitrd/scripts/setup-aoe.sh #!/bin/bash # #%stage: device # /lib/mkinitrd/scripts/setup-aoe.sh #!/bin/bash #%stage: block #%modules: aoe # modprobe aoe ls /dev/etherd echo "1" > /dev/etherd/discover ls /dev/etherd create image with: cp /boot/initrd /boot/aoe_initrd cp /boot/vmlinuz /boot/aoe_vmlinuz mkinitrd -i aoe_initrd -k aoe_vmlinuz -m aoe -f aoe -D eth0 and grub menu of: title aoe root (hd0,0) kernel /aoe_vmlinuz root=/dev/etherd/e9.1p3 splash=silent showopts vga=0x317 initrd /aoe_initrd -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/307900