On Tue, 5 Feb 2008, Beyerle Urs wrote: > Hi Jon, > > Jon Peatfield wrote: >> Many thanks for this! I was just reading through the pxe booting stuff >> at: >> >> http://linux.web.psi.ch/livecd/diskless.html >> >> and thought I'd followed the instructions closely enough but kept getting >> the boot failing 'cos I'd used a hostname rather than an IP address in the >> nfsroot definition. After that it worked like a charm. >> >> I'm a little bit puzzled why a hostname doesn't work, by the time the >> mount is attempted the dhcp client has already obtained a list of >> nameservers and seems to have filled in resolv.conf. Maybe the initrd >> environment just hasn't got support for DNS lookups. I'll look more >> closely this afternoon but just thought I'd ask first... > > In the initrd environment I use busybox to mount nfs. > >> livecd-2.7.4/linux-live.sl/initrd/static-binaries/busybox > BusyBox v1.7.1 (2007-09-21 01:50:40 CEST) multi-call binary > > Some dhcp features are build in, but it seems that > > mount -t nfs -o nolock,ro,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,hard,intr $NFSROOT $DIR > > is not taking into account /etc/resolv.conf or it is not able to do a DNS > lookup. I haven't looked closer into the busybox source code so far... Fair enough. If I have any time I might try to work it out, I just thought I'd ask first. Is there a simple way to add stuff into the initrd (or run an initrd like thing on a normal box) for debugging? >> When doing the nfsroot thing is there a good reason to keep everything in >> squashfs? ie for testing a custom version can I arrange to just have a >> suitable plain sl (installed) tree nfs mountable by clients? That will >> let me fairly easily tweak the set of packages and config until I'm ready >> to build a set of custom .iso files... > > You're right. Keeping everything in squashfs makes no sense in NFS mounted > environment. My idea was just to keep it simple - that means to have the same > build scripts for a LiveCD/DVD as for a NFS mounted Live System. Of course, > this is something I could put on the wish list of future livecd-build script > versions. > Is anybody else interested in this "feature"? Clearly having it in squashfs does save diskspace which isn't a 'bad' thing... :-) >> I'm considering making some custom local net-boot images - partly to >> test/diagnose machines (though the standard livecd seems to contains >> pretty much all one would need) and maybe to run some information displays >> (they just need to boot with a slightly weird X config and automatically >> run a web browser pointing at a suitable URL)... > > This should be quite simple just download the latest livecd build scripts > (livecd-2.7.4) and follow the description on > http://linux.web.psi.ch/livecd/build.html I've started looking at that, and may feel brave enough to work through the setup soonish (if my boss will let me...:-) >> Obviously in such a setup one wouldn't want to nfs mount the nfsroot rw so >> it would still need some kind of unionfs/aufs magic (at least for things >> like /tmp etc). > > Why do you need nfsroot rw? In this case one client can change the nfsroot of > all other clients, which is maybe not desirable. Or would you provide for > each client an own nfsroot? I don't want to mount the nfsroot rw, but the clients will probably need some writable area (if nothing else dhcp and a few other daemons will want to update various files) though maybe just mounting some tmpfs will be enough rather than anything more complex... -- Jon