[mythtv-users] Best options/howto for diskless frontends

Per Jessen per at computer.org
Mon Nov 26 12:51:46 UTC 2012


Paul Gardiner wrote:

> On 26/11/2012 09:33, Per Jessen wrote:
>> Paul Gardiner wrote:
>>
>>> 2) To use opensuse because it's the linux I best know.
>>
>> I have servers on openSUSE that boot with root on NFS, it works.  I
>> had to generate the initrd separately though.
> 
> That's good to know. Any hints on the generation of a suitable initrd?
> I'm guessing that's going to be the difficult bit.

I think the main thing is adding the "nfs" feature when you run
mkinitrd:  "mkinitrd -f nfs". 

>>> 3) To do the initial install actually on the diskless machine,
>>> so that I get as much automatic config as possible.
>>
>> I think that means hooking up a drive first, then installing, then
>> copying the filesystem to your NFS-server.  I don't think I've ever
>> tried installing straight onto NFS.
> 
> I feared that might be the case. I do have a spare drive here, so I
> suppose that's not really going to be an issue, provided that when
> I'm up and running from NFS, I can install freshly built versions
> of mythfrontend without connecting up the drive. 

That is not a problem - once you're booting from NFS, everything else
works as normal.  There used to be an option in YaST that allowed
installation to a directory, I haven't looked for it though.  With that
you might be able to NFS mount your root drive, and carry out a regular
installation onto that. 

> If both server and client were running 64bit opensuse, I could just
> chroot into the NFS-exported directory presumably, but with the server
> being 64bit and the client 32bit, I imagine there could be problems.

I havent tried it, but in principle it should not matter.  I mean, the
client does not directly access anything on the backend, it all happens
through the videostream or via the database. 

> (Am I right that the Zotac ION can't run 64bit code?)

Dunno, I guess newer Atoms have 64bit support?



-- 
Per Jessen, Zürich (10.4°C)
http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland.



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