[mythtvnz] Convert existing Frontend to a diskless Frontend

[Duncan Ritchie]

One thing I forgot to say was that there is a bug in the Fedora image
creation scripts for diskless machines.  Some of the problems have been
patched but anyone using Fedora 7 will need to make most of the changes
described in here:
http://www-theorie.physik.unizh.ch/~dpotter/howto/diskless

 

Duncan

 

  _____  

From: mythtvnz-bounces at lists.linuxnut.co.nz
[mailto:mythtvnz-bounces at lists.linuxnut.co.nz] On Behalf Of Duncan Ritchie
Sent: Monday, 21 January 2008 6:12 p.m.
To: 'MythTV in NZ'
Subject: Re: [mythtvnz] Convert existing Frontend to a diskless Frontend

 

The howto said I would need to recompile the kernel with the NFS support but
it seems the newer Fedora 7 ones have it stock so I think you should check
the knoppmyth ones first to see if you can avoid that step.

 

My feeling is that it would much easier to do any prep work on the physical
machine (kernel, package installs etc.) then rsync or tar it over.  rsync is
good because you can copy it over, test, make changes to the physical
machine and re copy.  The recopy does changes only, compressed and binary
diffs so its very fast.

 

Duncan

 

  _____  

From: mythtvnz-bounces+duncanr=pobox.com at lists.linuxnut.co.nz
[mailto:mythtvnz-bounces+duncanr=pobox.com at lists.linuxnut.co.nz] On Behalf
Of John Moore
Sent: Monday, 21 January 2008 5:02 p.m.
To: MythTV in NZ
Subject: Re: [mythtvnz] Convert existing Frontend to a diskless Frontend

 

Thanks for the suggestions Duncan and Hads.

I have been looking at the following 
http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=DisklessFrontend

in conjunction with the link that Duncan supplied.

>From the second half of the above link, it looks like another option is to
tar up the partition while excluding my \myth and \mnt\share directories.
(2.4GB)
And copy over to the Knoppmythbe sever to a directory such as "frontend1"
and then untar.

The howto goes on to say that I need to recompile the kernel to support NFS
and NFSroot and then copy this updated kernel into the "frontend1"
directory.
Following the steps in the howto, it appears to me that I will be
recompiling the Knoppmythbe servers kernel and copying this into the
"frontend1" directory.
As the Frontend and Backend machines are different, won't this cause a
problem!

Wouldn't I be better off to recompile the kernel on the Frontend machine
first before I tar it up and copy it over to the Backend


Thanks for the help
John

PS When I get this sorted, I'll record my steps and update the Wiki so other
noobs like me can have a walkthrough.




Duncan Ritchie wrote: 

I have been working on exactly this over the last few weeks.
 
I am using Fedora 7 for my main backend and IPCop as my firewall/DHCP etc.
 
I followed the instructions here
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Diskless_Frontend
 
A couple of things that caused me problems:
 
When you rsync make use you have umount'ed your NFS mount to
mythvideo/mythmusic shares or exclude them.
 
The snapshot feature on fedora sees to be broken so I had to export the root
rw.  This isn't an issue for me as I'm happy with a whole image per client.
 
You need to have busybox.anaconda installed on the image so it is easier to
do this before you rsync.
 
I ignored the DHCP info and used the fixed lease feature in IPCop.
 
I also tested with a VMPlayer image as shown in the link above.  This worked
really well.
 
Duncan
 
-----Original Message-----
From: mythtvnz-bounces+duncanr=pobox.com at lists.linuxnut.co.nz
[mailto:mythtvnz-bounces+duncanr=pobox.com at lists.linuxnut.co.nz] On Behalf
Of Hadley Rich
Sent: Sunday, 20 January 2008 4:45 p.m.
To: MythTV in NZ
Subject: Re: [mythtvnz] Convert existing Frontend to a diskless Frontend
 
On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:32:38 John Moore wrote:
  

I have been wanting to have a diskless frontend for a while now, but the
issue of rebuilding the frontend and losing all the changes I researched
and made for the VFD display and Remote etc has made me very reluctant.
 
However I was wondering if there is any straight forward way to take my
current setup and convert it to a image that can be saved on the backend
and then used to boot the diskless frontend.
I am a relatively noob to Linux, but have been playing around with
Knoppmyth for the last 3 years.
 
Any ideas / suggestions would be appreciated.
    

 
You could rsync the entire filesystem to a subdirectory on the backend and 
then pxe boot and NFS root the frontend from the backend.
 
I do that here for the frontend in our bedroom although the filsystem was 
created with debootstrap rather than using an existing filesystem.
 
hads
 
  

 

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