[mythtv-users] Questions on PXE booting a frontend

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Tue Aug 4 15:14:45 UTC 2009


On Tuesday 04 August 2009 07:38:43 Mike Perkins wrote:
> Brian Wood wrote:
> > On Monday 03 August 2009 13:04:18 Ronald Frazier wrote:
> >> I too have had no problem letting my myth backend run dhcp for the
> >> diskless frontend systems and letting my router handle dhcp for
> >> everything else. My dhcpd.conf file is similar to Jelte's, but there
> >> are a few differences. Here is what I have. Don't ask my why I did
> >> things any specific way. I just copied setting from some tutorials and
> >> adjusted accordingly.
> >
> > If it's working I wonder if it is because of luck. Perhaps one of the
> > machines takes a lot longer to respond to a DHCP request or some other
> > mechanism is preventing both dhcp servers from trying to work at the same
> > time, or they are sufficiently stubborn to try again when they get
> > interfered with, and the retry intervals are sufficiently different to
> > prevent collision
> > (not "collision" in the ethernet sense, but in the "two dhcp servers
> > trying to work at the same time" sense).
> >
> > The conventional wisdom is that more than one dhcp server on a network is
> > asking for trouble.
>
> I solved this problem another way: I have a small box which contains an
> original VIA 8000 motherboard and an old 850Mb hard disk, which just sits
> there 24/7 and provides services like DHCP, syslog, print services and a
> couple others. This draws 30-35W or so, and I'm happy with that.
>
> This means that I have one place where all DHCP configuration occurs, which
> makes life fairly simple. Because this box is on all the time I can also
> use it to wake up other boxes as and when they are required.
>
> (Thinks: upgrade this box to a cheap Atom/Ion board sometime? maybe.)

You might consider going to some sort of solid-state drive. A CF card with a 
SATA or PATA adapter is fairly cheap. That would save you about 10 watts.

850MB huh? I recently tried to install Linux on a very old 20GB drive, 
thinking that would be enough.

The install failed with "no more room on device".

Turned out it was a 20MB drive, must have been older than I thought. I should 
have realized that when I saw "Conner" on the drive.

-- 
Brian Wood
beww at beww.org


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