work needed for network booting Debian Live
On 4/27/06, Jason D. Clinton <me@jasonclinton.com> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> As promised, though late, I am joining the project to add support for network
> booting to Debian Live. My company, Safedesk Solutions, employs myself and
> also Mike Angelo (who posted to this list previously) to make this happen.
>
> Presently we are distributing a modified version of Knoppix to our customers.
> This modified version uses exactly the same SquahsFS file "KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX"
> that is found on the Knoppix ISO but we are using a combination four things
> to make it network boot to clients:
>
> * DHCP config file modifications
> * TFTP to serve out pxelinux, the knoppix kernel, and the initrd
> * A Samba server w/ CIFS extentions to serve the root filesystem
> * An initrd with mount.cifs added and a custom linuxrc which causes it to
> mount the filesystem from the server (getting the IP from a boot param.)
Hi.
I'm working on a new thin client generation system, similar to pxes
but with the binaries of debian generating system called TCOS (thin
client operating system)
TCOS [1] are some initramfs-tools scripts that copy into initramfs some utils:
* dhcp client (I don't know how works udhcpc included in busybox)
* scan local disk to use swap partition
* if swap not avalaible create swap file in a ext3 or vfat partition
* download with tftp extras squashfs (contain Xorg alsa esound
autofs...) this is optional and reduce RAM requirements
* mount squashfs in /usr and with unionfs give /usr mountpoint rw mode
* Exec ldconfig
* prepare autofs to mount in terminal cdrom floppy and pendrives
* launch discover to load extra modules
* start ssh and inetd (ssh don't work yet)
* load default keymap (server keymap)
* put XX% sound levels and unmute them
* start esound daemon
* START LTSPFS [3] daemon, this uses X auth method to access from
server to terminal filesystem, goodbye samba, goodbye nfs.... with
autofs is a kill app.
* Start (local or remote) Xorg session
All of this is working now, minimum requirements of terminal is 32 Mb
(with local swap) or 64 Mb without swap. I'm using 2.6.15-1-486 debian
kernel without patches.
I'm working in a configure gui tcos-config [2]
[1] Expecifications of TCOS (in spanish sorry, need spanish-english translator)
http://soleup.eup.uva.es/mediawiki/index.php/TCOS/es
[2] tcos-config (python gui to configure tcos vars)
http://soleup.eup.uva.es/mediawiki/index.php/TCOS-config
[3] ltspfs project
http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/LtspFS
[4] svn of initramfs-tools-tcos
http://soleup.eup.uva.es/websvn/
click in soleupix project --> initramfs-tools-tcos (folder)
If you have a pxes network you can probe my project doing this:
1.- Download this 3 files:
http://soleup.eup.uva.es/tcos/
2.- Put them into /tftpboot/pxes/
3.- Edit /tftpboot/pxes/pxelinux.cfg/default and add these lines:
label tcos
kernel vmlinuz-tcos
append ramdisk_size=65536 initrd=initramfs-tcos root=/dev/ram0 BOOT=tcos quiet
4.- When terminal boots, wrtite into cmdline:
boot: tcos
Terminal will boot and connect with X server who response dhcp request.
I don't know exact status of pxes project, but i thing that it was
absorved by 2x.com company, the future isn't very free, I think.
Greetings...
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