PXE booting Media Director

[Lexje]

Hi,

As I am unable to properly boot into LMCE (LMCE is running allright, but I have problems with nvidia X config (I guess)) I am trying to boot my laptop into PXE mode.

This is the first time I use PXE so bear with me..

Booting and connecting to LMCE seems to work allright!
My laptop starts booting from the PXE server, but then, after a while it halts:

Code: [Select]

ipconfig: no devices to configure
/init:  .:  1: Can't open /tmp/net-eth0.conf
Kernel Panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
What is happening here?

Thanks for sticking with me!

Erwin

[Zaerc]

Sounds a bit like the problem described here: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Unrecognized_NIC

 

[Lexje]

Thx Zaerc,

In the mean time (as it seems I can't get anything going on LMCE...) I have tested with my elder laptop (Dell Latitude C840):
- booting PXE works like a charm!
- the description on the wiki is not completely acurate (perhaps outdated?) http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Generic_PC

- Next problem:
I have the LMCE Launch Manager appearing on the laptop, however when I press 'Start Media Station' on the  Start tab, I get the message:

Code: [Select]

failed to regenerate skin for Orbiter
Somewhere during boot or reboot I saw a message flashing by (MySQL related? not sure) that:
Host 192.168.80.2 is not allowed to connect...

Any idea's??

Thanks again for your patience and help.

Erwin

[totallymaxed]

Thx Zaerc,

In the mean time (as it seems I can't get anything going on LMCE...) I have tested with my elder laptop (Dell Latitude C840):
- booting PXE works like a charm!
- the description on the wiki is not completely acurate (perhaps outdated?) http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Generic_PC

- Next problem:
I have the LMCE Launch Manager appearing on the laptop, however when I press 'Start Media Station' on the  Start tab, I get the message:

Code: [Select]

failed to regenerate skin for Orbiter
Somewhere during boot or reboot I saw a message flashing by (MySQL related? not sure) that:
Host 192.168.80.2 is not allowed to connect...

Any idea's??

Thanks again for your patience and help.

Erwin

I'm not sure what LinuxMCE version your running but as a general rule a reload router will fix the 'Failed to generate skin for orbiter' message.

Andrew

[Lexje]

Thanks for your tips.
A couple of remarks / questions:

I'm working with Kubuntu 7.10 and Beta4 (says download)
- I downloaded both CD version and DVD versions
- tried now on at least 3 different machines and on neither DVD install has worked (the DVD works, that's ok)
- my only option is installing 7.10 first and then working with 2 CD's
- I found it's (much) quicker to just copy the iso images of (3) of 7.10 and the 2 CD's to hd and installing from there instead of having the system cache the CD's (take's forever)
- question: is there any recommended harddisk layout? As I was working with a 250G disk, I didn't want the whole disk taken. Therefore I used a 10G root partition and a 30G home part.
-> today (after trying to connect 2 PXE laptops) I found my system short of diskspace (10G!!!)

I'll definitely try reloading the router.

Thanks for helping!

Erwin

[totallymaxed]

Thanks for your tips.
A couple of remarks / questions:

I'm working with Kubuntu 7.10 and Beta4 (says download)
- I downloaded both CD version and DVD versions
- tried now on at least 3 different machines and on neither DVD install has worked (the DVD works, that's ok)
- my only option is installing 7.10 first and then working with 2 CD's
- I found it's (much) quicker to just copy the iso images of (3) of 7.10 and the 2 CD's to hd and installing from there instead of having the system cache the CD's (take's forever)
- question: is there any recommended harddisk layout? As I was working with a 250G disk, I didn't want the whole disk taken. Therefore I used a 10G root partition and a 30G home part.
-> today (after trying to connect 2 PXE laptops) I found my system short of diskspace (10G!!!)

I'll definitely try reloading the router.

Thanks for helping!

Erwin

Remember that each PXE booted MD is using part of the Cores boot drive for its boot partition and therefore you need to allow for that in your decision about the size of the Core's boot partition. A good rule of thumb is 20gig for the Core/hybrid then add 7gig for each pxe booted MD you expect to add.

Alternatively just use the DVD installer and install 250gig drive - this will give you enough for a larger number of MD's and a reasonable amount of media storage to start with.

[Lexje]

Any pointer to where the PXE booted MD files are stored?
I could move them to another partition and symlink?
As written, DVD will not work for me.. either hardware or what, it just won't work.

Thanks,

Erwin

[totallymaxed]

Any pointer to where the PXE booted MD files are stored?
I could move them to another partition and symlink?
As written, DVD will not work for me.. either hardware or what, it just won't work.

Thanks,

Erwin

When you add an MD a new directory structure for that MD is created in /usr/pluto/diskless/

linuxmce@dcerouter:~$ cd /usr/pluto/diskless
linuxmce@dcerouter:/usr/pluto/diskless$ ls
120  156  216  225


Each directory below /usr/pluto/diskless is an MD ie the numbered directory names represent the MD's device number. If you 'cd' into any of these numbered directories you will see they are strucutred just like '/'.

So in the above example '120' is MD #120 and you could ssh into it (assuming it was booted) from a console session at your Core by doing;

ssh moon120

[Lexje]

Andrew, thanks for the tip of ssh-ing into moon#md;
What would be the passwd of the md?
I've tried using the standard user / user and some more but it won't accept me..

Thanks for your advise.

Erwin

[totallymaxed]

Andrew, thanks for the tip of ssh-ing into moon#md;
What would be the passwd of the md?
I've tried using the standard user / user and some more but it won't accept me..

Thanks for your advise.

Erwin

Hi Erwin,

Make sure that the MD is booted. Then either ssh into your Core from another computer or fire up the KDE desktop from your Core's Orbiter and open a Konsole session then do the following;

sudo su - <return> (*makes sudo sticky so you don't need to type it before command)

Now type;

ssh moonNN <return> (*where NN is the device number of the MD you want to ssh too)

Because you had 'sudo'd' yourself before ssh'ing into the MD you are logged into the MD as root;

Hope the above is clear.

Andrew

[Lexje]

Andrew,

Thanks for helping out, even on saturday night! (what kind of people are we? :-))
The above is clear, and I am connecting to moon## as root, but it asks for a password anyway..
As I have never entered a passwd in Kubuntu, I don't have one...

So what's the clue?

In the meantime did a ssh erwin@moon## and then login succeeded..
So i guess its a root pwd problem?

Thx,

Erwin

[totallymaxed]

sudo su - <return> (*makes sudo sticky so you don't need to type it before command)
Now type;
ssh moonNN <return> (*where NN is the device number of the MD you want to ssh too)
[/ quote]

Perhaps it is safer to just type

sudo ssh moonNN

when all you want to do is connect to the MD. That way, you will end up as linuxmce after you log off from the MD. The method that Andrew just described leaves you as root, which means you could easily do lots of damage to your system!

Yes thats true... but on the other hand many of the things you need to do at an MD in these situations are more easily achieved as 'root'.

[totallymaxed]

Andrew,

Thanks for helping out, even on saturday night! (what kind of people are we? :-))
The above is clear, and I am connecting to moon## as root, but it asks for a password anyway..
As I have never entered a passwd in Kubuntu, I don't have one...

So what's the clue?

In the meantime did a ssh erwin@moon## and then login succeeded..
So i guess its a root pwd problem?

Thx,

Erwin

Hi again... your right it is a bit sad to be here on Saturday night!

ok... the problem is that your MD has not fully completed creating itself yet and some scripts are still to be run. So do the following (at this point the MD you are configuring does not need to be booted);

at your Core's console type (sudo yourself first);

chroot /usr/pluto/diskless/NN passwd <return>

**Where NN is the device number for the MD you are working on. Everything else in the command above is literal. You will be asked to set the root password for the moonNN - enter and confirm the password of your choice. now you can do the line below from the console (assuming the MD in question is booted)

ssh root@moonNN <return> **NN is the device number of the MD

All the best

Andrew

[Lexje]

Andrew, thanks for your help!

Regards,

Erwin

[OuZo]

Lexje, i also have a 250G SATA drive...

i used the DVD to install so i didn't get any choices with partitioning...
i would have done this:
/ 20G-30G
swap 2-3G (i like putting swat at the end of the drive)
/home = the rest of the drive...

the DVD makes a 10G partition at the end of a drive for a backup/restore i think...

totallymaxed, can you please shed some light on /usr/share/pluto/diskless/
is that supposed to be a sand box or UML for the diskless MD's?
because on my brother's MD, when he loads into KDE he is root & gets full access to the core... which i really dont want... (its scary)

also i noticed:

/usr/pluto/diskless/53/boot$ ls
initrd.img                    initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic.bak  vmlinuz
initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic  System.map-2.6.22-14-generic      vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic

there is no grub menu list to edit... so how/were would i change boot paramiters?

thanks