On 9/24/07, Jan Engelhardt wrote:

On Sep 24 2007 17:20, Matthew Stringer wrote:

...

Hi,

I want to PXE boot a machine off a custom Suse image so that all it does is run a script to ssh somewhere.

Struggling to find a suitable howto, anyone have a good link?

http://jengelh.hopto.org/linux/adm_dxsuse.php

See also: http://en.opensuse.org/KIWI With kiwi we can also create nfs/nbd root images. Cheers -J -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 9/25/07, Matthew Stringer wrote:

...

See also:

http://en.opensuse.org/KIWI

With kiwi we can also create nfs/nbd root images.

That KIWI program looks ideal although the doc on your link are for creating a CD rather than a PXE netboot image, do you know of better documentation?

The best document you can get of kiwi is /usr/share/doc/packages/kiwi.pdf that comes with kiwi package. You can download just the pdf from here if you like: http://kiwi.berlios.de/ We are using kiwi for LTSP deployment. Kiwi creates netboot as well as custom image that is mounted via nbd/nfs by the diskless clients. http://en.opensuse.org/LTSP Cheers -J -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 20:10 +0530, CyberOrg wrote:

On 9/25/07, Matthew Stringer wrote:

...

...

See also:

http://en.opensuse.org/KIWI

With kiwi we can also create nfs/nbd root images.

That KIWI program looks ideal although the doc on your link are for creating a CD rather than a PXE netboot image, do you know of better documentation?

The best document you can get of kiwi is /usr/share/doc/packages/kiwi.pdf that comes with kiwi package. You can download just the pdf from here if you like:

http://kiwi.berlios.de/

We are using kiwi for LTSP deployment. Kiwi creates netboot as well as custom image that is mounted via nbd/nfs by the diskless clients.

I guess each diskless client needs a separate image?

http://en.opensuse.org/LTSP

Cheers

-J -- Roger Oberholtzer

OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST Ramböll Sverige AB Kapellgränd 7 P.O. Box 4205 SE-102 65 Stockholm, Sweden Tel: Int +46 8-615 60 20 Mobl: Int +46 70-815 1696 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 20:39 +0530, CyberOrg wrote:

On 9/25/07, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

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...

http://kiwi.berlios.de/

We are using kiwi for LTSP deployment. Kiwi creates netboot as well as custom image that is mounted via nbd/nfs by the diskless clients.

I guess each diskless client needs a separate image?

No, we are using single squashfs image to boot multiple clients, however it is possible to use one image per client if required.

The image is used just to boot up clients and provide LDM(LTSP Display Manager) which provides Xsession over ssh, so the user is using server's resources including all the softwares installed there.

I will have to investigate this. I currently use thinstation, which seems to have a similar method with a squashfs image. We usually boot the diskless client and run one app all the time. So accessing the server is no issue. Out of curiosity, how small could the image be? On thinstation, with a graphic desktop, our image is < 8 MB. I would love to use suse as the base as I am more familiar with it than with thinstation. -- Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST Ramböll Sverige AB Kapellgränd 7 P.O. Box 4205 SE-102 65 Stockholm, Sweden Tel: Int +46 8-615 60 20 Mobl: Int +46 70-815 1696 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sep 27 2007 12:19, CyberOrg wrote:

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seems to have a similar method with a squashfs image. We usually boot the diskless client and run one app all the time. So accessing the server is no issue. Out of curiosity, how small could the image be? On thinstation, with a graphic desktop, our image is < 8 MB. I would love to use suse as the base as I am more familiar with it than with thinstation.

That sure is awesome(< 8 MB) we would love your contribution in trimming down our image which is currently 160MB squashfs. Although it could be reduced, we are trying to get everything working well first, reducing the size is not very high on our priorities.

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3020209 Sep 8 21:06 initrd-2.6.22.3-ccj53_lh-default.cpio.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1612192 Aug 29 19:47 vmlinuz-2.6.22.3-ccj53-default Nothing special really. Just tweak mkinitrd so much that it sets up an aufs, which is really just a few kilobytes extra compared to the regular initrds mkinitrd produces. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sep 27 2007 11:50, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

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...

That sure is awesome(< 8 MB) we would love your contribution in trimming down our image which is currently 160MB squashfs. Although it could be reduced, we are trying to get everything working well first, reducing the size is not very high on our priorities.

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3020209 Sep 8 21:06 initrd-2.6.22.3-ccj53_lh-default.cpio.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1612192 Aug 29 19:47 vmlinuz-2.6.22.3-ccj53-default

Nothing special really. Just tweak mkinitrd so much that it sets up an aufs, which is really just a few kilobytes extra compared to the regular initrds mkinitrd produces.

So, these files boot the system and result in mounting the rest via NFS?

As per http://jengelh.hopto.org/f/opensuse-netboot.diff, it mounts the path (hardcoded - not so good - /daten/tftpboot/linux) from the NFS server (advertised by dhcpd - good) and combines it with a zeroed local partition LABEL=tmp (if available) or with tmpfs, to store changed data, and continues like a normal system. Contrary to implementations like "DXS" or KIWI (which I have not tried though), this uses a suse initrd and _not_ a "distro-independent" custom solution, because such often are not "100% nice" ;-)

I need to see how the remote system has the stuff to be mounted via NFS set up. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 25 September 2007 15:40:31 CyberOrg wrote:

On 9/25/07, Matthew Stringer wrote:

...

...

See also:

http://en.opensuse.org/KIWI

With kiwi we can also create nfs/nbd root images.

That KIWI program looks ideal although the doc on your link are for creating a CD rather than a PXE netboot image, do you know of better documentation?

The best document you can get of kiwi is /usr/share/doc/packages/kiwi.pdf that comes with kiwi package. You can download just the pdf from here if you like:

http://kiwi.berlios.de/

I got this working cheers, I was trying on a 10.3 RC1 box which blobbed, tried on a 10.2 machine which also failed, turned out to be a typo in the XML file. Regards Matthew -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org