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General => Installation issues => Topic started by: levster on October 12, 2009, 05:56:35 am

Title: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 12, 2009, 05:56:35 am
I had an interesting experience so far setting up my Core / MD units. My Core has been up and running for about a week now, with no major problems. One of my Win 7 machines keeps loosing its IP, but I think that that is isolated to that one as all of my other PCs and Macs are doing OK.

For the last several days I have been trying to set up a second LinuxMCE machine, on a Zatac 330 platform. I could not install 7.10 successfully, but was able to install 8.10 on it before, when I first started playing with MCE. This time however, I could not get the 8.10 to go through the process of updating itself to MCE no matter what I did. I tried reinstalling the OS from CD several times, and then going through the steps of upgrading, only to get the same errors that some of the components could not be downloaded, and the update process would constantly hang.  ??? That is until I tried one thing.

I took out the Core out of the loop completely, and connected the new PC directly to the cable modem. It installed and upgraded in one easy step…  :D I am not sure why, but it seems that the Core “running” my network was somehow interfering with the new PC’s download process… If anyone has other thoughts, please – I would love to hear them, as I have one more Zotac based PC that I will set up. If I do not have to take out the Core, at least for the original OS install, that would be nice.

My second question is – do I need to disable the Core function on the new Zotac PC that will act as an MD only? It has one NIC. I saw that there is an option on my 7.10 to disable the Core and leave the MD to load at startup.

Sorry for the long history, but I thought it was interesting to me, and maybe can help someone else.  :-[

Lev
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: tkmedia on October 12, 2009, 06:22:09 am
You should have only 1 core in a lmce install ... set the ion to pxe boot and set it up as a MD.






Tim
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: merkur2k on October 12, 2009, 07:05:03 pm
yep i think you may be confused here as to how an MD works. it does not have anything installed to it, in fact it does not even need a hard drive. turn it on and set it to boot from network. answer the questions. done.
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 12, 2009, 07:34:33 pm
Can you please elaborate as to how I can set an MD to boot from a network? I was under impression that I need LinuxMCE to be setup on all machines. Also, how does the fact that the Core, which is an older AMD machine with an ATI card, running 7.10, allow newer Zotac board with an Nvidia 9400 video card to run? How do I set up the correct video drivers?

If I can get the MDs to boot up and act as slaves with the Core pushing the content would be ideal!

Thank you,

Lev

PS. OK. I looked up the info about the network boot, and will definitely try it. Still, how do I make sure that the newer video card is supported?
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: rocketlynx on October 13, 2009, 12:52:54 am
Can you please elaborate as to how I can set an MD to boot from a network? I was under impression that I need LinuxMCE to be setup on all machines. Also, how does the fact that the Core, which is an older AMD machine with an ATI card, running 7.10, allow newer Zotac board with an Nvidia 9400 video card to run? How do I set up the correct video drivers?

If I can get the MDs to boot up and act as slaves with the Core pushing the content would be ideal!

Thank you,

Lev

PS. OK. I looked up the info about the network boot, and will definitely try it. Still, how do I make sure that the newer video card is supported?


1. You will have only 1 Core fully installed with LinuxMCE as per the wiki, the others will install from the Core over the LAN
2. Your Core will have two (2) Network LAN Cards, in your case 1 on the motherboard and another usually in a PCI slot
3. 1 NIC, network interface card, becomes the external LAN, connected to your broadband modem or WIRED port of a router and the other becomes the LinuxMCE internal LAN usually connected to a switch (or a router with the DHCP server functions turned off - the Core needs to supply the IP to the MDs and, if any, Mobile Orbiters)
4. Connect your Diskless (No hard Drive) computers that are to be "Diskless Media Directors" to the Core's internal LAN switch, one at a time initially, so that the Core can recognize them and build a Media Director image (on the core) for them.
--- Picture the Image of a Media Director as a drive that the Media Director's computer would boot from when turned on except, it resides on the Core and boots the MD over the Core's Internal LAN ---
5. If you are using LinuxMCE 8.10-Alpha2-Latest, and you should, the video in your Zotac should be recognized and at least get you an output from the VGA connector.  I would recommend connecting to a VGA monitor at first and then fine tune the output of your HDMI connector using the AV/Wizard after everything is set up and you are familiar with setting up your first Media Director.
 
Note: I use a wireless router with the DHCP server functions turned off for my Internal LAN so that my Media Directors can be hardwired over CAT5e and my WebDT 366 Orbiter can communicate through the wireless portion, with WEP Key encryption for security.

I hope this helps to clear some of the confusion up.

Best Regards,
Charles
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: totallymaxed on October 13, 2009, 10:19:28 am
Can you please elaborate as to how I can set an MD to boot from a network? I was under impression that I need LinuxMCE to be setup on all machines. Also, how does the fact that the Core, which is an older AMD machine with an ATI card, running 7.10, allow newer Zotac board with an Nvidia 9400 video card to run? How do I set up the correct video drivers?

If I can get the MDs to boot up and act as slaves with the Core pushing the content would be ideal!

Thank you,

Lev

PS. OK. I looked up the info about the network boot, and will definitely try it. Still, how do I make sure that the newer video card is supported?


You need to have LinuxMCE-0810 installed on your Core for the newer hardware like the Zotac's or Revo's to PXE boot and deliver MD capability. We have an alternative approach but it involves purchasing a Core with Cascade installed (Cascade is my companies commercial variant of LinuxMCE). See the the url to a thread discussing this in the footer of this message if you'd like to explore this option.

All the best

Andrew
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 13, 2009, 05:20:21 pm
Thank you for the replies.

I have set up an 8.10 on an AMD PC with an A8N-E board, and a second (PCI-based) NIC. I used the 8.10 because I do want the Zotacs to be functional.

DHCP "seems" to be working as I have leases to my other PCs in the house. However, the Core does not seem to "see" one of the PCs that is running unRaid. I have set up a static IP on the unRaid and am able to connect to it through the other PCs, just not the Core. When I set up 7.10 on the same AMD PC, the unRaid was quickly detected and added appropriately, so that I could browse it's contents from the Core.

How do I rediscover the unRaid box from the Core manually?

Thanks,

Lev
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: merkur2k on October 13, 2009, 06:01:17 pm
is there a reason you arent using dhcp for it? lmce uses dhcp requests to find new hardware so you should always use it.
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 13, 2009, 06:06:02 pm
I wanted to have a static IP on it as my Mac seems to have trouble connecting to it unless I use a static IP. It seemed to work with the 7.10 version.
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 13, 2009, 06:13:45 pm
OK. I set my unRaid box to obtain IP via DHCP and it did. It shows up under the DHCP client list with a valid MAC and an IP. However, I still do not see the wizard that lets me add the unRaid to the LinuxMCE.  ???

In the past, when I added any additional computers to my network, LinuxMCE Core would ask me if I wanted to use that PC for storage, and... This time - nothing!!! What am I doing wrong???

...

Well, after doing some research, I figured a way to manually add shares, and so far it seems to be working. It seems that the "cataloguing" of video files takes a long time... But, at least, they are coming through...
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 15, 2009, 04:09:57 am
So,... I am trying to do PXE boot, and the new MD keeps rebooting about 15 seconds into the initial boot-up. I have read here that a common issue was having two NICs and disabling one solves the problem. My Zotac 330 ion board only has one NIC! I do have an integrated 802.11g card. I'll try disabling that. Has anyone with this board had similar issues and been able to solve it? I keep getting stuck at what appears to be step 10.xxxxxx

Occasionally, I get an error "cannot connect to router".

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Lev
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 15, 2009, 06:03:56 am
I am a bit further now.

By digging some more around here I stumbled on the following suggestion:

/usr/pluto/bin/startup-script.sh

That seemed to get the MD to the point where there is a message

 "We announced ourselves to the router."

There is also a message of a permanent IP being assigned: 192.168.80.2 to a device '45'
Running Diskless_Setup.sh
Diskless Setup Failed

This is where I am stuck now...

Please, any suggestions, as I have searched for the "diskless setup failed" and there does not seem to be any more leads...

Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: jthodges on October 15, 2009, 03:36:50 pm
A number of us are having this issue with the current build.  I haven't heard of or found any workarounds yet, so we may be waiting a bit until someone is able to look at it.  Unless anyone else has an answer?  I am also stuck at this point.
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 16, 2009, 03:54:07 am
I have setup my Core and "MD" with both 810 and, being a novice at this, it seems to me that the second PC, which is supposed to be MD and only has one NIC, is trying to play the part of the Core. In 710, during the initial bootup, I remember that there is an option to disable the "Core" and just let it boot up as an MD. Is there a similar feature in 810, that would let the second PC boot up as a "slave MD"?

Also, a little different question: Where can I adjust the scaling of video? On a PC I know that I can go into my video card's setup and scale down the video to fit my projector screen. Here, I am not sure where to look.

Thanks,

Lev
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: tschak909 on October 16, 2009, 04:28:23 am
*thwaps-levster*

boot from the network, and you'll have an MD. DO NOT ATTEMPT A DISKED MD!

No,

Don't argue.

Just do it.

-Thom
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 16, 2009, 04:43:37 am
Thom,

I appreciate your "humor", but I WISH I COULD BOOT FROM A DISKLESS SYSTEM!!! As you can see, I cannot!!! Reading the posts, apparently I am not the only one who is having problems with diskless MD. If you have a suggestion - I am all ears!!! Believe me, it would be much easier for me if I could avoid second 810 install. So, "Don't argue. Just do it." is not a Nike commercial here.

Please, I do not mind constructive criticism, but do not make fun or look "down" at the rest of us here, who liked the idea of LMCE, but just can't make it work! If we were plug-and-pray people, we would stick with Windows MCE! I like the idea of LMCE, but it just needs more "fine-tuning".

So, if you do not have anything useful to say - DON'T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL!!!!

And, keep your "thwaps" insults to yourself!  >:(

Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: tschak909 on October 16, 2009, 04:50:07 am
Install the latest build, use it.

Disked MDs do not work. Do not try them.

-Thom
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 16, 2009, 04:53:02 am
You lost me...

First you say - install the latest build. Then you say - disked MDs do not work. ???

Are you talking about installing the latest build on a Core? If that is the case - I did! I have the latest 0810 alpha 2 running. I just installed it a few days ago. What else are you referring to?
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: tschak909 on October 16, 2009, 05:04:37 am
we have newer changes than a few days ago, some last minute changes before beta. The Beta DVD will be released tomorrow.

-Thom
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 16, 2009, 05:10:16 am
 :D

Are you saying that there will be a beta 0810 tomorrow??? That would be great!

So, just to make sure, for us with "learning disabilities",

1. Get a new DVD image tomorrow
2. Reinstall the Core with the new image
3. Attempt a diskless MD with the new Core

Am I missing anything?

Thanks,

Lev
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: colinjones on October 16, 2009, 02:39:31 pm
yes he means install the new version on the core. All discussions that talk about "installing" refer to the core.... all discussions about MDs refer to booting from the network. If you have a boot issue on an MD then we need to address the boot issue on the MD.... ie address the root cause not the symptom

we have not had disked MDs for a long time.... for normal situations they are absolutely not required, realistically boot time is not an issue (which is most people's concern) as even on a slow machine the boot time is little different. The only genuine reason for disked boot (that springs to mind) is for wireless MDs... and that may come back in time :)
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 16, 2009, 07:12:50 pm
yes he means install the new version on the core. All discussions that talk about "installing" refer to the core.... all discussions about MDs refer to booting from the network. If you have a boot issue on an MD then we need to address the boot issue on the MD.... ie address the root cause not the symptom

we have not had disked MDs for a long time.... for normal situations they are absolutely not required, realistically boot time is not an issue (which is most people's concern) as even on a slow machine the boot time is little different. The only genuine reason for disked boot (that springs to mind) is for wireless MDs... and that may come back in time :)

Thank you! 24 minutes left for the download, and then - off to the races!!! Can't wait!  ;D
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: levster on October 17, 2009, 05:31:29 am
New 810 beta running on a core. I tried adding an MD, a Zotac ion 330 board, and cannot get past the first 2 seconds of boot. The MD gets stuck at "unable to locate configuration file". The immediately preceding message is "Trying to load: pxelinux.cfg/default".

Then a message: Boot failed: press a key to retry, or wait for reset...............

Also, on the Core, superimposed on to the main LMCE page, is a message "Starting Media Director Devices". However, this message does not change and does not go away. Obviously, I do not see this message on the web orbiter.

Any thoughts?

Lev
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: Thingie on October 17, 2009, 05:35:58 pm
New 810 beta running on a core. I tried adding an MD, a Zotac ion 330 board, and cannot get past the first 2 seconds of boot. The MD gets stuck at "unable to locate configuration file". The immediately preceding message is "Trying to load: pxelinux.cfg/default".

Then a message: Boot failed: press a key to retry, or wait for reset...............

Also, on the Core, superimposed on to the main LinuxMCE page, is a message "Starting Media Director Devices". However, this message does not change and does not go away. Obviously, I do not see this message on the web orbiter.

Any thoughts?

Lev


Same problems here
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: pigdog on October 17, 2009, 08:51:42 pm
Hi,

After alpha 2.15 I had this error message come up on a system using a RLT8139 which worked fine until the 2.15 update.

-Trying to load:pxelinux.cfg /01-00-08-54-11-98-e3
-could not find kernel image:31/vmlinux
boot:

Eventually after two weeks of tracking it down...

I went into /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg and edited the default boot script to remove acpi=off.

The system then booted.

After everything was working I changed the default back to acpi=off.

My system BIOS did not have any settings for turning on or off acpi.

Maybe yours does and you could try that before doing any editing.
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: Thingie on October 18, 2009, 12:39:26 pm

I went into /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg and edited the default boot script to remove acpi=off.

The system then booted.

After everything was working I changed the default back to acpi=off.

My system BIOS did not have any settings for turning on or off acpi.

Maybe yours does and you could try that before doing any editing.

Looked in the /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg folder and it was empty. So nothing to edit. Is this normal?
I tried to add the MD manually filling in as much of the settings as I could and the progress got a few steps further but then it gets into a loop and keeps rebooting. So I deleted the manual MD and now it's stuck again at 'Setup Failed'. I used the same computer setup on the 710 releases and never had any problems.
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: pigdog on October 18, 2009, 02:55:38 pm
Hi,

When I logon to a console and enter the command      cd /tftpboot

then    ls

I have the following response   35 47 default pxelinux.0 pxelinux.cfg

I have two MD's which are 35 and 47 from the output above.

You should have the minimum of default pxelinux.0 and pxelinux.cfg

default and pxelinux.cfg are directories.

In pxelinux.cfg I have the MAC hardware addresses from the ethernet cards in the MDs and a file named default.

Default reads...

DEFAULT Pluto
LABEL Pluto
KERNEL default/vmlinuz
APPEND root=/dev/nfs acpi=off vga=normal initrd=default/initrd ramdisk_size=10240 rw ip=all apicpmtimer

You could try to create the default file and then boot your MD.
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: Schmich on October 19, 2009, 04:47:12 am
I have no idea if this is stated on the DVD or if it has anything to do with your problem but, in the wiki it says that on the DVD the initial MD image is not installed so you have to do it manually by running:
Code: [Select]
/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.shhttp://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/LinuxMCE-0810_beta
Again I might be completely off-track but the page is new so I thought I'd mention it.
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: team_steeze on October 24, 2009, 09:36:46 am
This might be a moot point for you guys by now but I thought I would share that I had and fixed the same problem.
I went into /tftpboot/MD# and found that the symlinks for initrd.img and vmlinuz were broken.  I traced these over to /usr/pluto/diskless/MD#/boot and there, initrd.img and vmlinuz were linked to initrd.img-2.6.27-15-generic and vmlinuz-2.6.27-15-generic respectively.  The problem is that they should have been pointing to 2.6.27-14, and not 15.  So, I fixed the links with a simple:
Code: [Select]
ln -s -f /usr/pluto/diskless/MD#/boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-14-generic initrd.imgI did the same for vmlinuz and this issue was no longer an issue!
Now, to figure out why this occurred on a MD that was functioning just fine...
I have my suspicions that when I rebuilt a disk image through the web admin for another MD, it somehow caused this problem.
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: ThinkCentre on October 06, 2010, 03:51:57 am
I know it's an old one but I have the exact same problem as described by Levster. I setup my system, attempt network boot and get a list of errors ending with
"...
...
Trying to load pxelinux.cfg/default
Unable to locate configuration file"

This happens on all computers I attempt to network boot. I am running one of the most recent snapshots. I assume it's caused by the network being setup incorrectly. I have a single network card and integrated modem/wireless router.

The way I prepare to network boot is as follows. Does it seem correct? I tried to follow http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Network_Settings

To ENABLE a Network Boot
On the Core
1.   Advanced >> Network Settings >> Use DHCP
2.   Computing >>Web Admin >> Advanced >> Network >> Network Settings >>
   -Check Enable DHCP Server Proxies 192.168.80.1 to 192.168.80.128
   -Check Provide IP addresses for anonymous devices not in Pluto Database 192.168.80.129 to 192.168.80.254
   -Choose “Obtain an IP address from DHCP server”
On the router
3.   DHCP settings >> Turn DHCP off >> Save and reboot

On the MD
4.   Plug in LAN cable. Right click on the LAN connection, select Properties >> Select Internet Protocol Version 4, click Properties >> Choose “Use the following IP Address
-IP: 192.168.1.101
-Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
-Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1
And “Use the following DNS server address   
              -Preferred DNS: 192.168.1.1
   -Alternate DNS: xxx.xxx.xx.xx (this is from my ISP)

5.   At startup ensure BIOS is set to Network boot first preference
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: phenigma on October 06, 2010, 05:32:29 am
You will need to run /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh on the core before you will be able to boot MDs.  You should really be using 2 NICs to boot MDs as well... I couldn't comment on your methods so far as I have no experience with single NIC setups.

The post your replying to is quite old and related to outdated installs.  You should open a new topic if you continue to have problems after running the above script.

J.
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: ThinkCentre on October 06, 2010, 10:09:17 am
You're very right! The network settings page didn't have that step listed. I've now progressed to my next issue and i'll start a new thread.

Cheers!
Title: Re: Setting up Core – MDs.
Post by: purps on October 06, 2010, 11:08:55 am
Buy a second network card. They are not expensive.