[mythtvnz] Diskless Frontend

[Steven Ellis]

>
>> I'm running an Epia SP13000 as a combined frontend/backend as a
>> diskless system NFS mounted back onto my server box (an Athlon
>> XP2700+ with 50G of raid1 OS and 600G raid5 storage for videos,
>> music, TV, pix etc).
>
> I'm thinking of doing the same setup with my system. It's annoying that
> neither Debian nor Knoppmyth allow you to install to a folder on a
> mounted filesystem rather than the filesystem itself. It would make
> life easier for setting up a PXE booting network.
>
> Wouldn't it make more sense to have the backend running on the server
> and just the frontend running on the PXE booted device? This would
> lower network traffic while watching live TV as the backend streams to
> the /myth/tv (or wherever) folder and the frontend reads from it. It
> would work fine for one or two tuners and a frontend on a 100Mbit
> connection but as soon as you started adding more clients or use wifi,
> you may start to see bottlenecks in the network.
>
> Just my two cents.
>
> I've been trying to get a Compaq T1510 thin client to boot from TFTP for
> a while now with no luck. It acquires an IP address from the DHCP
> server but never requests the kernel. Any ideas Robin?

Diskless or largely diskless frontends are always an interesting solution.
The problem is finding hardware that can be a diskless frontend that will
play HD native over HDMI/DVI with digital audio support. Still looking for
the right solution. Oh and wireless too.

Steve