Re: Is it possible to have squashfs inside initrd?

2014-09-20 13:27 GMT+02:00 Stefan Baur <newsgroups.mail2@stefanbaur.de>:

Am 20.09.2014 um 13:23 schrieb Daniel Lindgren:
> > iPXE can dynamically adapt the address to the current LAN, which means
> > that the initrd file is always transferred over LAN.
>
> Yes, and you can use the same variable to specify the path to the
> download server for the squashfs image. So where is your problem?
> *confused look*
>
>
> How? iPXE changes DHCP option 209 and 210 to use HTTP instead of TFTP
> and points to the local server.
>
> Can the "fetch" parameter be sent as a DHCP option?

That's no longer a debian-live question, so if you have any further
questions regarding this, you should ask on the ipxe forums or IRC
channel, if Google doesn't help you.

Here's a sample boot.ipxe file for you:

#!ipxe

kernel /foo/bar/vmlinuz.lkrn quickreboot boot=live
fetch=http://${net0.dhcp/next-server:ipv4}/foo/bar/live.iso noeject
live-config quiet splash
initrd /foo/bar/initrd.img
boot

that's 3 lines, lines are starting with "kernel", "initrd" and "boot".

Ah, OK, I haven't given enough information about how our environment is set up.

We only have one DHCP server that serves all 60 LAN:s (and 100+ other scopes for servers and other equipment). All scopes are setup to boot ipxelinux.0 from a central server.

We use an iPXE script to change the required DHCP options to make PXELINUX use HTTP instead of tftp and also redirect pxelinux.0 to load pxelinux.cfg/default (and everyting else) from the local LAN server. The PXELINUX menu is used for a lot of different tasks; installation of Windows clients, Linux servers, loading tools and other stuff over the net.

Once you've booted over PXE and get the PXELINUX menu, whatever option you choose is loaded from the local server over HTTP.

The PXELINUX menu however is "static" and that means that the fetch URL is not adaptable with the current setup. It will always point to the central server.

The URL used by pxelinux.0 is dynamically adapted to the local server, which means that loading a somewhat big initrd is not a problem for us.

Sorry about the confusion.

Cheers,

Daniel