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

Paul Gardiner lists at glidos.net
Tue Nov 27 10:34:28 UTC 2012


>>>> 5) To be able to switch off the diskless machine without
>>>> shutting down.
>>>
>>> This is certainly easier with diskless booting, just hit the big white
>>> switch on the wall!
>>
>> No risk of leaving the servers exported files in a mess?
>
> Plenty of risk but you won't break the filesystem on the server so it
> will be individual files that will get messed up. I've not had any
> problems with MythTV frontend as the only state is the settings and that
> is stored in mysql. I have had problems with firefox getting locked with
> a diskless desktop system but that their crappy embedded database at fault.

That's good to know. I was forgetting that it was the cutting of the
power to a disk while it writes that is the worse risk, and of course
that isn't happening.

>>> With an SSD you could run with a read-only root. Once you have the
>>> config sorted add "ro" to the /etc/fstab options for the root directory
>>> and reboot. I use this with Debian and once I'd figured out how to
>>> divert some files/directories to writeable NFS mounts or tmpfs it's
>>> fine. You need a tmpfs for /tmp, /var/run and /var/lock and either
>>> divert /var/log to /tmp or NFS. After that there are a bunch of files
>>> that need to be symlinked elsewhere but you will find those when you
>>> boot readonly.
>>
>> Oh right! So no need for unionfs or anything complicated. Just a few
>> directories to target... although I worry that leaving unfinalised
>> stuff in /var/lock could cause problems... don't know really - I'm
>> guessing.
>>
>
> If you have /var/lock on a tmpfs there will be nothing left after a
> reboot so nothing to worry about!

Ah right. Excellent. That's clearly the way to do it.

Cheers,
	Paul.


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