Talk:HOWTO Gentoo Diskless Install
From Gentoo Linux Wiki
Contents |
[edit] Troubleshooting needed
I followed the guide, but both pxegrub and pxelinux stall at some point. There are no error messages, /var/log/messages says nothing and tcpdump doesn't help either. I have no idea how to diagnose it. I created a trouble-shooting page, but a more extended (while still pointed) version is badly needed.
[edit] GenKernel, LiveCD and SquashFS
This is helpful for keeping a single unified image for your CDs and PXE boot ups. Follow the instructions for how to build a LiveCD and the follow the instructions in this Howto. In your NFS directory put the 'boot' directory and the files livecd and livecd.squashfs.
Then make sure your grub file has something similar to this:
title=Gentoo-LiveCD-PXE
root (nd)
kernel /eta/boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.12-gentoo-r10 looptype=squashfs loop=/livecd.squashfs --no-mem-option nfsroot=172.16.0.57:/diskless/eta root=/dev/ram0 real_root=/dev/nfs ip=dhcp udev nodevfs dodmraid cdroot
initrd /eta/boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.12-gentoo-r10
[edit] AMD64 Server (Master) and x86 & AMD64 Clients (Slaves)
[On 2005.11.19 Nicholas asked:] I am interested in doing this for my home computers since I have several of them. Now I'd like to install the server on one of my AMD Athlon64 machines but I'm wondering if having that setup will allow for both AMD64 and x86 slaves??
altough late : this isn't a problem at all since you configure the make.conf file for each slave in their chroot, all you need to configure it good to make the clients able to run it (say : i386), every app you'll compile will be usuable on any client.
[edit] Bug in DHCP 3.0.3
My netbooting stopped working after upgrading to dhcp-3.0.3-r4; the client would receive an IP address and send a request for the pxegrub file, but then it displayed an error "transmit timed out". See this page for a fix:
http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/DhcpdSiaddr
[edit] Will all this work with a router?
I see many HOWTO's out there talking about clients and servers and all that. I know it is theoretically possible to use this with a separate router but if I wanted to configure my server to allow the router to handle the dhcp on the client how would I go about doing this? I am currently using my router as an uplink for my internet and sharing with two computers. I believe I will have to get an extra network card and run the internet directly to my machine and allow it to handle the dhcp. Then run the second cable from my computer to the router and distribute from there. I do not, however, wish to add an additional network card to my machine and would rather know if there is a way to allow the router to handle part of it and still use this client/server set up.
[edit] Problem with onboard Intel Pro 100VE
The onboard lan on an Intel board was consistantly detecting as an rtl8139, instructions on making a custom pxegrub can be found here: [1]
except that in this case only --disable-rtl8139 was needed
this site has a larger (perhaps not complete?) list that may be of interest for similar problems: [2]
./configure --enable-tg3 --enable-diskless --disable-jfs --disable-ufs2 --disable-minix --disable-reiserfs --disable-iso9660 --disable-3c595 --disable-3c90x --disable-davicom --disable-e1000 --enable-eepro100 --disable-epic100 --disable-natsemi --disable-ns8390 --disable-pcnet32 --disable-rtl8139 --disable-sis900 --disable-tulip --disable-tlan --disable-sundance --disable-via-rhine --disable-w89c840 --disable-hercules --disable-serial
