Bright minds, 1. Once upon a time there was an option in Linux kernel that was called "Root file system on NFS" or something like that. I cannot find this option in either openSuSE or SLES10 kernels. Has it become an integral part of Linux NFS implementation or has it been removed entirely (can hardly imagine that would be the case)? 2. I'm looking for a definitive, clear directions (howto) on how to build a Netboot setup. I.e. how to netboot a SLES/openSuSE computer off another SLES/openSuSE machine using PXE/DHCP/TFTP/NFS combo with root file system residing on NFS. (I find a lot of info on how to perform a network installation, but not how to netboot a computer). There is a good howto for Gentoo can be found here http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/diskless-howto.xml. But this howto is quite old and difficult to "translate" to modern SuSE systems. Thanks! -- Warm regards, Michael Green -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Michael Green wrote:
Bright minds,
1. Once upon a time there was an option in Linux kernel that was called "Root file system on NFS" or something like that. I cannot find this option in either openSuSE or SLES10 kernels. Has it become an integral part of Linux NFS implementation or has it been removed entirely (can hardly imagine that would be the case)?
2. I'm looking for a definitive, clear directions (howto) on how to build a Netboot setup. I.e. how to netboot a SLES/openSuSE computer off another SLES/openSuSE machine using PXE/DHCP/TFTP/NFS combo with root file system residing on NFS. (I find a lot of info on how to perform a network installation, but not how to netboot a computer). There is a good howto for Gentoo can be found here http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/diskless-howto.xml. But this howto is quite old and difficult to "translate" to modern SuSE systems.
Booting a machine over the network is not too difficult. It obviously needs to boot something first, typically from a NIC bootrom, a floppy, a USB stick, a CD etc. This something is "etherboot" (or whatever it is called nowadays). I used to have such a setup where I would have machines boot from a ethernet PXE bootfloppy, retrieve kernel and initrd from a TFTP server and then boot the local system. There's quite a bit of info available out there, and it's not very distro specific. For having root on NFS, you basically need this initial system of kernel+initrd to mount your NFS filesystem, and do a pivot_root to swap root filesystems. I suspect you'll have to cook up your own initrd with your own linuxrc to get this to work. Some years back I had a smallish cluster where each node would boot off a floppy, run the initial system and copy a complete system from a fileserver to the local disk. Basically a "new" install on every boot. (the nodes didn't boot very often). This is all entirely doable, but not for the faint of heart. I'm sorry that I can't exactly provide "a definitive, clear direction (howto)", but I'll be glad to help where I can. A tentative howto might be something like this: 1. prepare your root filesystem, fileserver and NFS setup. 2. decide how you will boot your system (floppy,CD, bootrom etc), then prepare that media and the TFTP setup. (You're welcome to borrow mine). 3. work on preparing the initrd+linuxrc to do the swap to your NFS root. /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Michael Green wrote:
Bright minds,
1. Once upon a time there was an option in Linux kernel that was called "Root file system on NFS" or something like that. I cannot find this option in either openSuSE or SLES10 kernels. Has it become an integral part of Linux NFS implementation or has it been removed entirely (can hardly imagine that would be the case)?
2. I'm looking for a definitive, clear directions (howto) on how to build a Netboot setup. I.e. how to netboot a SLES/openSuSE computer off another SLES/openSuSE machine using PXE/DHCP/TFTP/NFS combo with root file system residing on NFS. (I find a lot of info on how to perform a network installation, but not how to netboot a computer). There is a good howto for Gentoo can be found here http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/diskless-howto.xml. But this howto is quite old and difficult to "translate" to modern SuSE systems.
Thanks! -- Warm regards, Michael Green
Try this page, that should work (only you needn't set virtual machine, it work with real machine). http://en.opensuse.org/PXE_Diskless_Node Only what need additional attention is set bootloader to none, because you use to boot PXE instead of any bootloader. JR -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Thanks you folks!
I'll look into that information..
--
Warm regards,
Michael Green
On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Josef Reidinger
Michael Green
Try this page, that should work (only you needn't set virtual machine, it work with real machine). http://en.opensuse.org/PXE_Diskless_Node Only what need additional attention is set bootloader to none, because you use to boot PXE instead of any bootloader. JR -- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (3)
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Josef Reidinger
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Michael Green
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Per Jessen