Any issue ?

[jesaipa]

Hi,

I've an old tablet PC and I'd like make a media director with it in wifi.
It is for the kitchen to play mp3s so the wifi bandwidth is enougth.

The problem is the wifi are in usb and I can't boot in PXE mode, and the solution with grub don't work because my usb wifi adapter is'nt reconized.
Is there a solution as install a small distrib of linux to could make a media director ?
All ideas are welcom

Thank's

[table9]

From  nite_man:
Generally LinuxMCE allows to create many diskless media clients - Media Directors (MD). They shouldn’t have HDD and they are boot from the core. That approach lets you possibility to have non powerful PC as Media Director. But if you don’t satisfy a boot speed or by some other reason would like to have MD with HDD it’s also possible. Just install Kubuntu 0704 on that PC and run there LinuxMCE installator. It’ll detect the core and offer you install just MD. Be sure that your core and MD are in the same network!

[jesaipa]

Thank's for this reply so quickly

Can I install other distrib that kubuntu 0704 ?
My tablet pc have a compact flash for the hard drive. I've one of 1Gb for my current installation under Xlobby (tablet client is win98 installation with xlobby's client) and I d'like dont touch it because I've passed lot of time to do the installation. (tablet pc have not cd rom drive and can't boot in usb)
But in my old stock computing I've a 32MB compact flash.
Did you think that's possible to put it a small linux distrib to make a md ?

Thank's a lot

[Hagen]

Did you think that's possible to put it a small linux distrib to make a md ?

No, not at the moment.
LMCE 0704 is tied to Kubuntu 0704
LMCE 0710 (beta3) is tied to Kubuntu 0710
It wount work on other distributions yet. (There are examples of installation on other distributions, but that takes a lot of work)

[jesaipa]

Ok thank's for the answer

Last question : anyone know how disk space this installation (kubuntu & lmce for a md) I need ?

Thx

[rafik24]

  Hi jesaipa,

 it is possible to boot over wifi using some tricks.

 You can copy both vmlinuz and initrd.img from the /tftpboot/ folder of your core on a usb stick.

 then make it bootable using grub.

 Once you can boot from the usb stick you'll notice that the wifi drivers are not available.
 You can uncompress initrd.img add the wifi drivers and firmware to it and add iwconfig.

 Once this is done you need to modify  the nfs script located in the initrd.img
and get it to run iwconfig wlan0 essid MY_ESSID key = 00000000000000

 You will also need to edit the initramfs.conf file to change the device from eth0 to your device name.

  I did this on one of my MD's and i cant notice any differences between wired and wifi so far ( i'm not using hdtv by the way).

 if my explanations are not detailed enough please let me know.

 I shall document this soon,

 Rafik

[finsdown]

Rafik,

I for one would be very interested in this method for my MD's.  I would be pushing HD content thru it so I can provide feedback on any bandwidth problems. Can you provide more details?

Thanks.

[Zaerc]

Cool boot method rafik24.

finsdown: HD on a diskless MD over wifi?  I think you're better off saving yourself the trouble.

[jesaipa]

Hi Rafik,

It's a good news
I think that I've understand but I'm noob with linux.
I'll try to do that and give you feedback

Thank's lot

[rafik24]

 Ya pas de quoi,

 look at how init works and you should be done,
 Feel free to ask if you get stuck.

 Rafik

[rafik24]

 Hi Zaerc,

 your right but as some of my md's are not pxe compliant one has to do with what he has.
 I'm better of using a usb stick rather than a disk and my Md is still diskless.

 I tried playing around with disked MD's but it seem like all the changes do not get applied as if it was  diskless.

 Rafik