Bristol Digest, Vol 550, Issue 2

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Today's Topics:

1. PXE/nfsroot for active servers (Matt Savigear)
2. Re: PXE/nfsroot for active servers (Shane McEwan)
3. Re: PXE/nfsroot for active servers
(bblug@gascoigne19.freeserve.co.uk)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 13 May 2014 22:10:27 +0100
From: Matt Savigear <mcs_lug@savigear.com>
To: Bristol LUG <bristol@mailman.lug.org.uk>
Subject: [bristol] PXE/nfsroot for active servers
Message-ID: <53728A43.8050008@savigear.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Hi all,

After the recent failure of my NAS I ended up getting a ZyXel model
which was DOA, so I returned it. I have now bitten the bullet and
purchased a second Synology unit to serve as my backup device.

This has led me to think further about my other services, currently
running from an SSD-equipped mini-itx machine.

I'd like to migrate the setup to a PXE boot linking to an NFS-provided
Debian installation. I have one I use for booting machines without
mounting their internal drives but that simple case isn't going to cut
it here.

What I'd *like* to do is effectively copy my existing (quite tweaked)
SSD content over to an NFS mount to save me having to reinstall from
scratch and figure out all the tweaks I made last time. To make it work
initially I *think* this should be just:
- Setting up PXE/TFTP with a pxelinux.0 and suitable .cfg
- Dropping the current kernel and initrd somewhere accessible
- copying and publishing the root filesystem over NFS

But...

I need to keep the system up to date with security updates and the like.
What happens when apt upgrades the kernel? Right now apt messes with the
grub and boot configuration files and does all sorts of processing to
drop a new kernel in place. How will an NFS root mess this process up?

Is it just a case of removing grub from the system when I copy the
filesystem? I'm happy to manually edit the pxe .cfg files to point to a
new kernel but I don't want to get involved in much more than that level
of admin.

Does anyone have experience of an updateable NFS-based machine?

Thanks,

Matt.




------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 14 May 2014 10:13:05 +0100
From: Shane McEwan <shane@mcewan.id.au>
To: bristol@mailman.lug.org.uk
Subject: Re: [bristol] PXE/nfsroot for active servers
Message-ID: <537333A1.5020808@mcewan.id.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

On 13/05/14 22:10, Matt Savigear wrote:
> I'd like to migrate the setup to a PXE boot linking to an NFS-provided
> Debian installation. I have one I use for booting machines without
> mounting their internal drives but that simple case isn't going to cut
> it here.

G'day!

If I understand what you're trying to do then you're wanting to run your
machine "diskless".

Have a look at the DRBL project: http://drbl.org/

Shane.



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 14 May 2014 10:38:47 +0100
From: <bblug@gascoigne19.freeserve.co.uk>
To: "'Bristol and Bath Linux User Group'" <bristol@mailman.lug.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [bristol] PXE/nfsroot for active servers
Message-ID:
<06d201cf6f58$4e3cb400$eab61c00$@gascoigne19.freeserve.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Depending on what you're trying to achieve in the long-run, you may have
some success with the system I use with my scouts when we run cyber cafes
etc in the field...

Check out LTSP (the Linux Terminal Server Project), it's debian based and
once you get the hang of handling the lts.conf file it's really very
powerful!

Cheers,

John

-----Original Message-----
From: bristol-bounces@mailman.lug.org.uk
[mailto:bristol-bounces@mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Shane McEwan
Sent: 14 May 2014 10:13
To: bristol@mailman.lug.org.uk
Subject: Re: [bristol] PXE/nfsroot for active servers

On 13/05/14 22:10, Matt Savigear wrote:
> I'd like to migrate the setup to a PXE boot linking to an NFS-provided
> Debian installation. I have one I use for booting machines without
> mounting their internal drives but that simple case isn't going to cut
> it here.

G'day!

If I understand what you're trying to do then you're wanting to run your
machine "diskless".

Have a look at the DRBL project: http://drbl.org/

Shane.

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------------------------------

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End of Bristol Digest, Vol 550, Issue 2
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