LinuxMCE Forums
General => Installation issues => Topic started by: B34N on January 13, 2014, 02:52:18 am
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I have an old laptop or two that I would like to try out at least temporarily as an MD. I looked all over the Wiki and am not sure that http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Automatic_diskless_boot_of_media_directors (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Automatic_diskless_boot_of_media_directors) is relevant for a 12.04 install. If not, is there a better resource? I'm just looking for instructions on trying an old laptop out as an MD.
B34N
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Simply set the laptop's BIOS to boot from the network, if available. See what happens?
-Thom
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If not available, I have had success with rom-o-matic/gPXE disks rom-o-matic.net
Or have a play with a VirtualBox.
Cheers,
Matt.
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Right, I forgot about the gPXE boot CD/USB/Bootfloppy :)
-Thom
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I have an old Pentium 4 laptop, 512M of RAM, that I was net-booting off of a highly modified Diskless MD image which I'm using as a workstation in my workshop. I was using the local disk as swap, to offset the limited RAM. That was working fine off of 10.04, so I think you'll probably be fine net booting it.
I did an in-place upgrade to 12.04, which I'll be documenting over time. I'm sick right now, so I don't feel like doing it at the moment... The diskless image I was using caused me issues in the core upgrade (no real support for Diskless Workstations, only MD's) so I had to delete it. If you're doing a new install of 12.04, things will likely go just as described in the Wiki. Once I got over all the upgrade hurdles, 12.04 on the core has been running pretty well for me (Disclaimer: I'm not running the Diskless MD's yet; production is still on another network using Minimyth).
HTH!
/Mike
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Right, I forgot about the gPXE boot CD/USB/Bootfloppy :)
-Thom
I was very pleased first time I got that working! Even the ancient hearing-aid-beige equipment with no PXE capability can be transformed into an MD. Not very aesthetic for the living room, but perfect for the workshop!
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Simply set the laptop's BIOS to boot from the network, if available. See what happens?
It got an IP address then:
TFTP prefix /tftboot/
Unable to locate configuration file
This laptop is an old Dell 9300. I think it is with a Centrino CPU. Pretty old but higher end for its time. SCreen is busted up but works well as a MythTV front end and playing back HD video. Would be nice to have it work as a MD without too much trouble.
Any thoughts?
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Hi B34N!
Something isn't quite right then... SSH into your core, and run the following commands:
ls -la /tftpboot
ls -la /tftpboot/default
ls -la /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
cat /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
cat /var/cache/bind/db.linuxmce.local
Paste the output of each, and we'll see what the current state is...
HTH!
/Mike
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Did you install from a DVD? If so, did you run
sh /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh ? This was not yet baked into the DVDs last time I installed (around a month ago)?/
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ls -la /tftpboot
ls -la /tftpboot/default
ls -la /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
http://pastebin.com/4a4jdCJY (http://pastebin.com/4a4jdCJY)
cat /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
http://pastebin.com/cPe52Jbk (http://pastebin.com/cPe52Jbk)
cat /var/cache/bind/db.linuxmce.local
http://pastebin.com/j5vrLB7V (http://pastebin.com/j5vrLB7V)
Here is a "screen capture" of the laptop's output. https://www.dropbox.com/s/3sym36yffi46qtu/2014-01-13%2020.25.36.jpg (https://www.dropbox.com/s/3sym36yffi46qtu/2014-01-13%2020.25.36.jpg) I told you the screen was busted up. :-P
Thank you for trying to help!
B34N
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B34N,
Your issue is definitely due to the Diskless_BuildDefaultImage.sh script, which is called by Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh, not having been run.
As Huh indicated, you'll need to
sh /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh
That will prepare the diskless images, and based on the other pastes, everything should just work at that point.
Thanks for the assist, huh!
/Mike
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mkbrown,
is there a reason why you specify sh as the shell to run Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh instead of relying on the shebang line in the script itself?
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mkbrown,
is there a reason why you specify sh as the shell to run Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh instead of relying on the shebang line in the script itself?
Mostly to credit huh with the fix, and from working on RHEL and Debian where /bin/sh is normally linked to bash, but your point is valid; especially since Ubuntu is linking sh to dash now... :-\
/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh
is the proper way to execute the script B34N. Thanks to posde for reminding me not to "assume". I'll put it down to being sick right now... ;)
HTH!
/Mike
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Mostly to credit huh with the fix, and from working on RHEL and Debian where /bin/sh is normally linked to bash, but your point is valid; especially since Ubuntu is linking sh to dash now... :-\
/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh
Worked great!
I now have the old laptop booting up as an MD. I will have to play around because regardless what I tried, I could not get it to use the external VGA port. If you think the external DVI will be different, I will try that.I also noticed that I could not play MythTV....but that's about all I tried. I did get an error that I could not connect to backend database. I did also see errors in my log about MythTV. http://pastebin.com/w0BsP30W (http://pastebin.com/w0BsP30W)
Here is my whole log in case I missed some errors. http://pastebin.com/cyTssMvJ (http://pastebin.com/cyTssMvJ)
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What is the GPU?
On core sudo -i
ssh moonXX where XX is the MD number
lspci -nn | grep VGA
The first time the MD sets up it goes through a great deal of installing in the background... did you force it to reload during this process or shut it down or anything? While you are at it dpkg --configure -a
If that returns anything, you have broken packages it is trying to fix.
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What is the GPU?
I have no clue. Any thoughts on how to find out?
On core sudo -i
ssh moonXX where XX is the MD number
lspci -nn | grep VGA
I saw the "Generic PC as MD" entry as Device 63. I got back "ssh: connect to host moon63 port 22: No route to host"
The first time the MD sets up it goes through a great deal of installing in the background... did you force it to reload during this process or shut it down or anything? While you are at it dpkg --configure -a
If that returns anything, you have broken packages it is trying to fix.
I was very patient and let everything complete. Nothing came back after "sudo dpkg --configure -a"
Thank you,
B34N
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I have no clue. Any thoughts on how to find out?
I saw the "Generic PC as MD" entry as Device 63. I got back "ssh: connect to host moon63 port 22: No route to host"
I was very patient and let everything complete. Nothing came back after "sudo dpkg --configure -a"
Thank you,
B34N
What followed is how to find out.
In order to ssh into the moon, it must be on. In web admin/Media Directors it will say what the MD number is. You can also see the list of MDs in /usr/pluto/diskless.
Everything in linuxmce runs as root with limited exception. My first instruction is almost always "sudo -i" so that you do not have to run sudo before commands, because sometimes sudo will not transfer across some of the commands I want run. When you ssh into an MD, you will be root. You must of course instantiate the ssh session as root. The dpkg --configure -a was to be run from the ssh session.
So turn on the MD, root up, confirm the MD number and try again.
In situations where the MD cannot be booted we will chroot it, but that should not be the issue here. *nor would it be helpful as we would tie it to the cores hardware*
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L3mce:
So you are saying that the computer must me on for me to ssh to it. Sorry...I have had a long day at work and wasn't thinking. Thank you for your patience! Response from lspci was:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV370/M22 [Mobility Radeon X300] [1002:5460]
Nothing came back after kpkg
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lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A3
I believe that is going to be on the radeon driver, and myth might not like it much... this is due to ATI dropping support like mad. Not much to be done if the open source driver cannot keep up.
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I believe that is going to be on the radeon driver, and myth might not like it much... this is due to ATI dropping support like mad. Not much to be done if the open source driver cannot keep up.
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV370/M22 [Mobility Radeon X300] [1002:5460]
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:2002]
Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon, radeonfb
Would be nice to get working, but not a big deal. I have a NUK on the way...but using this old laptop would work for a lesser used TV.
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Yeah... that's what I thought. It should work for everything but mythtv and true HD video files.
You can adjust the mythtv playback settings in the regular setup menu in myth (not the main setup under computing) to the "slim" playback profile, and you can playback recorded myth stuff in all likelihood... but live streaming is going to be HD and probably break or be unwatchable.
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Yeah... that's what I thought. It should work for everything but mythtv and true HD video files.
You can adjust the mythtv playback settings in the regular setup menu in myth (not the main setup under computing) to the "slim" playback profile, and you can playback recorded myth stuff in all likelihood... but live streaming is going to be HD and probably break or be unwatchable.
Thank you very much! This old laptop worked well as a MythTV frontend for a few years so I have no complaints. I guess it's time to move onto the next machine.With luck the NUC will work well and I will be able to ditch the old laptop with the broken screen.
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Thank you very much! This old laptop worked well as a MythTV frontend for a few years so I have no complaints. I guess it's time to move onto the next machine.With luck the NUC will work well and I will be able to ditch the old laptop with the broken screen.
Well... tell me what it does when you open myth. If you had good playback of HD myth before...
I mean unless this was a very old setup back when fglrx still worked with your HW on an old kernel...