Do MD's have to be diskless?

[mikester]

I played around with LMCE a few months ago and didn't get far, but I think part of the problem was my inexperience with Myth and Linux in general.  Now I'm really close to having a Mythbuntu 8.04 setup running, and I find myself missing some of the features LMCE would offer.

So I want to try out LMCE again, but one thing I found working with Mythbuntu was that diskless frontends were a major PITA.  I ended up buying 80GB SATA drives ($37 each ) for each frontend, and it was much easier to work with that setup.

I'll initially try the diskless method, but if I run into problems, is it possible to install LMCE to a harddrive on a MD, like I did with Myth?

[jondecker76]

Disked MD's were officiall dropped in 0710 if I remember right.

Not to worry, diskless MD's are absolutely painless! All you have to do is enter the bios of the computer you want to be a new MD, and ensure the settings are correct for PXE booting. Then plug in your ethernet cable and turn the power on - its really that easy

[mikester]

I hope you're right, and I hope it's more mature than the Mythbuntu 8.04 implementation.  I guess it should be, since they just added diskless support to Myth, and LMCE has apparently had it from the beginning.

I was a little worried, because 2 of my MD's are based off Shuttle KPC systems.  I never could get those to boot diskless under Mythbuntu - it would get halfway through the boot, and then it couldn't find the network adapter.  Installing to a harddrive worked flawlessly.  Hopefully I won't have the same issue with LMCE.  I think I saw someone else post here that they're using the KPC with a Celeron 430 - my exact setup, so that's encouraging.

[freymann]

I hope you're right, and I hope it's more mature than the Mythbuntu 8.04 implementation.  I guess it should be, since they just added diskless support to Myth, and LMCE has apparently had it from the beginning.

No comparison really! LMCE wins that task hands down.

I was a little worried, because 2 of my MD's are based off Shuttle KPC systems.  I never could get those to boot diskless under Mythbuntu - it would get halfway through the boot, and then it couldn't find the network adapter.  Installing to a harddrive worked flawlessly.  Hopefully I won't have the same issue with LMCE.  I think I saw someone else post here that they're using the KPC with a Celeron 430 - my exact setup, so that's encouraging.

You could always insert a known good PCI NIC and disable the onboard NIC, if you ran into problems and have a free slot.