[Gluster-users] Netboot / PXE-Boot from glusterfs?

[Mickey Mazarick]

Heh sure although we took a circuitous route to get to where we are.

To start with I recommend using DRBL (diskless remote boot linux). It's 
a well maintained project and will save you a lot of initial headaches 
of creating initrds compiling etc.
http://drbl.sourceforge.net/

It's nfs based but will make an image of a machine so we started by 
setting up an nfs based net boot using the base image it generated.
It set up dhcp, the tftp server and nfs although we discarded all that 
(as I said circuitous). This at least gave us a good starting point so 
we could first net boot, then add the gluster files to the initrd.

As I said it generates an initrd for you and puts all the scripts in a 
folder and gives you an easy way to build your own. There are lots of 
other tools that do this I just liked starting with it all in one place.

see their FAQ for how to generate the initrd and edit the init script
http://drbl.sourceforge.net/faq/fine-print.php?path=./2_System/04_how_to_debug_in_pxeinitrd.faq#04_how_to_debug_in_pxeinitrd.faq

Ok so we moved gluster and all the dependent libraries to the initrd 
folder rebuilt it and edited the init script to mount gluster. We also 
had to add all the dependencies too so there was a lot of 'ldd' trial 
and error to get all the dependencies (we use infiniband so this will be 
much less hectic for most ppl). Also you will find this a LOT easier 
with a later kernel as they upped the initrd size.

Hope that's a step in the right direction.

-Mic

Daniel Maher wrote:
> On 06/17/2010 04:05 PM, Mickey Mazarick wrote:
>
>> Let me know if anyone tries this; we can help with the first half
>> (getting gluster into an initrd).
>
> That would be very interesting ; if you'd be willing to share your 
> notes on this procedure, i'm sure i wouldn't be the only one to thank 
> you for it. :)
>


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