PXE boot MD

[B34N]

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 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

[tschak909]

Simply set the laptop's BIOS to boot from the network, if available. See what happens?

-Thom

[purps]

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.

[tschak909]

Right, I forgot about the gPXE boot CD/USB/Bootfloppy

-Thom

[mkbrown69]

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

[purps]

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!

[B34N]

Simply set the laptop's BIOS to boot from the network, if available. See what happens?

It got an IP address then:

Code Select Expand

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?

[mkbrown69]

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

[huh]

Did you install from a DVD?  If so, did you run

Code Select Expand

sh /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh ?  This was not yet baked into the DVDs last time I installed (around a month ago)?/

[B34N]

ls -la /tftpboot
ls -la /tftpboot/default
ls -la /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

http://pastebin.com/4a4jdCJY

cat /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

http://pastebin.com/cPe52Jbk

cat /var/cache/bind/db.linuxmce.local

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 I told you the screen was busted up. :-P

Thank you for trying to help!

B34N

[mkbrown69]

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

[Marie.O]

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?

[mkbrown69]

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

[B34N]

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

Here is my whole log in case I missed some errors. http://pastebin.com/cyTssMvJ

[l3mce]

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.