Diskless MD

[RGoolsby]

I am trying to use a laptop with network boot to act as a diskless MD.

I have followed the steps on
http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Automatic_diskless_boot_of_media_directors

"In LinuxMCE Admin go to Wizard, Devices, Media Directors. Add the media director if this is a new one, and set the mac address. The mac address should be a series of six 2 character sequences separated by colons, like this: 1A:00:F2:21:23:9F"

However I go there and I see my core as a device then I go to add new at the bottom, I update the information (no where for a MAC address) then the only button I see is a close button and the information that I have just created is no where to be found.

I clicked setup diskless media directors and reloaded the router and the MD will not boot.

I can update with screenshots if needed because i am sure my descriptions are not the best.

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.

[Zaerc]

Just hook the laptop up to the second network card in the core and boot it off the network.

[totallymaxed]

I am trying to use a laptop with network boot to act as a diskless MD.

I have followed the steps on
http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Automatic_diskless_boot_of_media_directors

"In LinuxMCE Admin go to Wizard, Devices, Media Directors. Add the media director if this is a new one, and set the mac address. The mac address should be a series of six 2 character sequences separated by colons, like this: 1A:00:F2:21:23:9F"

However I go there and I see my core as a device then I go to add new at the bottom, I update the information (no where for a MAC address) then the only button I see is a close button and the information that I have just created is no where to be found.

I clicked setup diskless media directors and reloaded the router and the MD will not boot.

I can update with screenshots if needed because i am sure my descriptions are not the best.

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.

The best and most reliable way to add an MD is to let the system add it automatically for you. I would suggest that you go into Web Admin and delete the MD you added manually. Then reload the router from Wizard -> Restart then click 'Reload Router'. When the Hybrids Orbiter reappears then just plug the Laptop into the LAN side of your Hybrid core (make sure you have set the bios of your laptop to PXE boot) and boot it. The lmce core should autodetect it and start to boot... you will see a message on your laptops screen saying that it "has been announced..." and then you will need to wait while the core stes the new machine up... this will take some while and for a long time nothing will appear to be happening. Be patient! Your Machine will then reboot and will start to PXE boot from the network... and will then run the AVwizard to configure the basic AV settings of your laptop... then it will run the 'Setup Wizard' to complete the setup.... then you are in business!

Hope the above helps

Andrew

[Luke122]

I second that.. I was able to connect a diskless compaq presario 710ca laptop through pxe, and the setup was automatic.  Performance wasnt very good (duron 1.2ghz, 256mb ram) but it did work, and I was able to stream a dvd to it.

[RGoolsby]

Thanks guys.  I will try the advice tonight when i get home from work.

When I go to the Wizard, Devices, Media Directors it shows a MD as Core/Hybrid.  Is this what I should delete? I am trying to that that this might be the only one listed.

I did get it to recognize the diskless MD one time and it hung as part of the setup and I I thought it froze. I will stick it out now and wait.  About how long should it take for the first time?  I have seen all different ranges of times on the boards.

[Hagen]

The only thing I did after hooking the laptop to the LMCE LAN (besides the obvious on-screen cues) to get my Dell Inspiron 6000 to work as an MD was enable network booting
(on some machines there's a button combo you can press on boot up, on my Dell it's ctrl-s and on the HP it's F12).

It booted straight into the AV vizard ("straight" taking about half an hour or so, I didn't time it).

Would only do UI1 though, so you should probably select that option.

[colinjones]

I also had a problem with just booting to PXE - (I don't have a dual NIC environment as I am still just playing, gonna build up a dedicated system from components in due course). The Dell laptop boots and goes through the initial part of Linux startup, changing the font, doing the announcement, then the last message I can actually see is running a .sh script that says something about diskless... it disappears too quickly as at that point it reboots again and goes into an endless loop and never gets any further!

I then read the bit RGoolsby refers to about adding the MD in the admin console. I don't know if this is a new bug for 0704, but the Add button does nothing. It just refreshes the screen - if you are not careful you could accidentally misinterpret the OnScreen orbiter config section for the core/hybrid as the new device and reconfigure that one - thankfully I carefully checked before I did this. No matter what I tried I couldn't Add a new MD (unlike in the Add new Device section which works just fine), so I couldn't type in the MAC as the instructions indicate.

In the end, I added a new Device from that dialogue (instead of new MD), struggled a little picking the right Template and other details. But finally got the device in with the MAC, now as soon as I boot the laptop it went all the way through just fine, and in the Admin console it correctly identifies it as an MD...

[totallymaxed]

I also had a problem with just booting to PXE - (I don't have a dual NIC environment as I am still just playing, gonna build up a dedicated system from components in due course). The Dell laptop boots and goes through the initial part of Linux startup, changing the font, doing the announcement, then the last message I can actually see is running a .sh script that says something about diskless... it disappears too quickly as at that point it reboots again and goes into an endless loop and never gets any further!

I then read the bit RGoolsby refers to about adding the MD in the admin console. I don't know if this is a new bug for 0704, but the Add button does nothing. It just refreshes the screen - if you are not careful you could accidentally misinterpret the OnScreen orbiter config section for the core/hybrid as the new device and reconfigure that one - thankfully I carefully checked before I did this. No matter what I tried I couldn't Add a new MD (unlike in the Add new Device section which works just fine), so I couldn't type in the MAC as the instructions indicate.

In the end, I added a new Device from that dialogue (instead of new MD), struggled a little picking the right Template and other details. But finally got the device in with the MAC, now as soon as I boot the laptop it went all the way through just fine, and in the Admin console it correctly identifies it as an MD...

If you get into an endless loop in the console on boot up that almost olways means that your display drivers are not setup correctly and X can't start as at this point on the first real boot the AVwizard needs to run and it can't if X is not running.

[1audio]

PXE boot requires several things to work right to work. It needs the DHCP server to both direct the MD to the correct boot and while its not obvious the system sort of reboots half way through (you will notice a fresh DHCP request during the boot) and that is where not having the DHCP server running it will crash like you saw. Hope this helps.

[totallymaxed]

Thanks guys.  I will try the advice tonight when i get home from work.

When I go to the Wizard, Devices, Media Directors it shows a MD as Core/Hybrid.  Is this what I should delete? I am trying to that that this might be the only one listed.

I did get it to recognize the diskless MD one time and it hung as part of the setup and I I thought it froze. I will stick it out now and wait.  About how long should it take for the first time?  I have seen all different ranges of times on the boards.

DO NOT DELETE THE CORE/HyBRID

The Core Hybrid is the Core's integrated MD/Orbiter deleting that will totally wreck your system.

If there is not other MD listed under the Core/Hybrid then your previous efforts to 'manually' add an MD did not actually add anything and you should just set the BIOS in your new MD to PXE boot and connect it and it should auto add as described in my earlier post. The reason I wanted you to delete it if it had been added by your manual add attempts is that the Core identifies all your devices by Mac Address and if your new MD's mac address was already in the DB then it would not get added automatically again until it was removed - deleting the MD from Wizard -> Devices ->Media Directors does this.

[colinjones]

Totallymaxed: can't comment on whether the display drivers were working correctly (no way to tell really!), all I can say is that the exact same laptop, with the exact same PXE configuration stuck in a reboot loop before I tried to add the MD to the Admin console - (1audio: I note that it was well into Linux boot, having already done several pages of logging on the screen, including changing the font, so there is no indication of a PXE issue, it gets well past the PXE part).

As soon as I created the MD manually (as a device, directly, not using the specific Add MD function, as that didn't work as already described) and rebooted the laptop again, it worked perfectly.

Nothing to fix here for me, I was only testing using it, I am not attempting to get it working permanently, and have now moved on to testing other stuff - just thought it might be of use to someone else.

[totallymaxed]

Totallymaxed: can't comment on whether the display drivers were working correctly (no way to tell really!), all I can say is that the exact same laptop, with the exact same PXE configuration stuck in a reboot loop before I tried to add the MD to the Admin console - (1audio: I note that it was well into Linux boot, having already done several pages of logging on the screen, including changing the font, so there is no indication of a PXE issue, it gets well past the PXE part).

As soon as I created the MD manually (as a device, directly, not using the specific Add MD function, as that didn't work as already described) and rebooted the laptop again, it worked perfectly.

Nothing to fix here for me, I was only testing using it, I am not attempting to get it working permanently, and have now moved on to testing other stuff - just thought it might be of use to someone else.

ok just a footnote to this then - adding the device manually in our experience can often leave you with an MD that looks like its been created fully and is working ok but in fact often is not. It seems like some of the scripts that get run during and after auto-detection do not complete properly if a manual add device is carried out. I can't say what exactly fails in this situation but it is our experience that using auto-detection is the most reliable way to add MD's in particular.

However your mileage may vary ;-)

[RGoolsby]

I get the following error when I try to boot:


ipconfig: No Devices to configure
/init: 1:Cant Open /tmp/net-eth0.conf

Kernal Panic - Not Syncing:  Attempted to Kill Init

This is the same error that I had gotten previously, and I thought that maybe I just didnt wait long enought.. but after waiting about 10 or 15 minutes before I figured it might be a legitimate error.

Suggestions?

[totallymaxed]

I get the following error when I try to boot:


ipconfig: No Devices to configure
/init: 1:Cant Open /tmp/net-eth0.conf

Kernal Panic - Not Syncing:  Attempted to Kill Init

This is the same error that I had gotten previously, and I thought that maybe I just didnt wait long enought.. but after waiting about 10 or 15 minutes before I figured it might be a legitimate error.

Suggestions?

Where do you get the error? at the MD as it tries to boot or at the core as it tries to boot?

[Hagen]

I had the loop once on the Dell Inspiron 6000 that I tested, it crashed at the network card.
But it has worked just fine 3 out of the four times I did try, but that one time I had to delete it (the MD from the admin page) and start again, then it worked (again)