[oskie]

Hello

I'm trying to set up a diskless HTPC (Zotac ION/Atom platform) using PXE booting and a root file system over NFS. I've gotten it to boot and mount the NFS filesystem in /live/image correctly, but at some point during the boot process it stops. The kernel isn't completely frozen since sysrq commands and console switching work.

I've removed "loglevel=0 quiet splash" from the boot options to show happening. I know that "/scripts/init-bottom" is run correctly every time. It also runs /sbin/init from the mounted /live/filesystem.squashfs. But then it stops. Sometimes a few init scripts are run, like console-setup ("Setting up console font and keymap"), sometimes not. But it never gets to the point where X is started. Unfortunately no error message is printed - I'm just left in the console screen.

Any idea what's wrong? Is there a sysrq key combo I can use to get more info on the problem? Like to find out if there is a hung process? (I believe I tried and I didn't get any process at all.)

Note: Booting from USB works great every time (but it's 10 times slower).

Oskar

[oskie]

Some more info: I'm running xbmc-live Camelot - 9.11.

How I set up my server:

• Installed dhcp3-server - basically just added filename "pxelinux.0" to the subnet scope.
  
• Installed atftpd - running as a daemon with tftp files in /var/lib/tftpboot
  
• Unpacked ubuntu netboot from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/k...oot.tar.gz to /var/lib/tftpboot
  
• Replaced the pxelinux.cfg/default file with this one:
  

DEFAULT xbmc-live
LABEL xbmc-live
KERNEL xbmc-live/vmlinuz
APPEND boot=live vga=788 xbmc=autostart,tempfs,nodiskmount,setvolume module=nvidia persistent quickreboot quickusbmodules notimezone noaccessibility noapparmor noaptcdrom noautologin noxautologin noconsolekeyboard nofastboot nognomepanel nohosts nokpersonalizer nolanguageselector nolocales nonetworking nopowermanagement noprogramcrashes nojockey nosudo noupdatenotifier nouser nopolkitconf noxautoconfig noxscreensaver nopreseed union=aufs initrd=xbmc-live/initrd.img root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=SERVER.IP:/NFS/EXPORT rw netboot=nfs

• Copied live/initrd.img and live/vmlinuz to /var/lib/tftpboot/xbmc-live/.
  
• Copied the contents of the live image to a directory and exported that through nfs.
  
• Activated PXE boot support in the Zotac mobo BIOS.
  

[oskie]

After some further debugging, it seems the Ubuntu upstart init is in control during the software "lock up". Also I found this notice about NFS issues here - but that should not affect normal operation without changes to /etc/init...

[draggy]

I've done a PXE boot in the past, and while I didn't use a live image like xbmc, I did use ubuntu on both the server and client.

Here's my /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default

Code:

LABEL linux
        kernel shuttle/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-server
        append root=/dev/nfs initrd=shuttle/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-server nfsroot=192.168.0.1:/nfsroot/shuttle ip=dhcp rw

I remember that there was something very specific about the LABEL, it had to be "linux" or it wouldn't work. Took me forever to figure that out to.
I'm not sure if that will apply to your live image, but thought I'd mention it.




Here's my /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf just for reference:

Code:

host pxe_client {
  hardware ethernet xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx;
  fixed-address 192.168.0.xxx;
  next-server 192.168.0.1;
  filename "pxelinux.0";
}

[derechteversus]

edit:
this may help, altough I used "fetch=http://myserverip/filesystem.squashfs": xbmc=autostart,tempfs,nodiskmount,setvolume,noredir

and remove the "persistent" option