Re: MythTV frustration.

Dylan Griffiths wrote:
> First, I'd love to PXEboot my machine (good thing I'm all Intel
> nics). I hear that Glenn had that setup. The last time I tried to
> setup a PXE boot server, it was a huge wash. How did you get it setup,
> and what did you use to make the system happy? I was thinking I'd setup
> an XFS on a system with more HD space (my 33gb tv partition is 23gb full
> after 1 day) and export via NFS. I'd also have to get the 4gb /
> partition setup, as well as the 1gb swap partition, via NFS. It's
> doable, I just don't have experience there.

Hey Dylan,

I have a tonne of experience with Linux thin client set-ups.

This is what you'll need on the server:
TFTP
DNS (or hosts file correctly setup)
NFS Server (I use the kernel server, not user-space.)
X + a login manager

The order of execution is
PXE/Etherboot -> DHCP -> TFTP -> kernel -> NFS -> X

I highly recommend installing LTSP 4.2 as it will test each of these
systems in its installer and what not. It also allows for local apps,
local sound, local devices, swap over NFS, etc instead of a pure thin
that's display only.

PXE/Etherboot, see my post here:
http://www.catprint.ca/blog/blog/linux/pxe.html

TFTP:
http://www.catprint.ca/blog/blog/linux/tftpd.html
You'll need kernel and modules (if you use that for local devices) in
the tftp directory here.

I'd suggest the hosts file rather than DNS if it's just a home network.
just make sure that in the hosts file the correct IP address corresponds
with the thin clients hostname in dhcp.

DHCP:
http://www.catprint.ca/blog/blog/linux/dhcp.html

NFS is fairly straight forward and the LTSP docs are more than
sufficient to cover that. Basically it's just editing /etc/exports and
restarting the server.

(G|K|X)DM is fairly easy to setup, about the only thing you need to
ensure is that it's serving over the network and not local only.
Assuming you aren't using local X or local chooser.

Any questions, give a shout.

Cheers,
lance

-- 
Lance Levsen,
Catprint Computing
Tel:  (306) 493-2249
Cell: (306) 230-8783
Blog: http://www.catprint.ca/blog/
SaskBlogs: http://saskblogs.catprint.ca/