GeeXboX

Trying to setup a 'diskless' client that will boot GeexBox over my network via PXE.

1. My network card on my diskless client doesn't have PXE bootrom, so I boot from an image for my network card I got from etherboot.org.
2. I've installed Tftpd32 on my windows machine.

So when my client machine tries to boot over the network I get:

Loading 192.168.1.100: ./GEEXBOX/boot/pxelinux.0 ... error: not a valid image
Unable to load file

Tftpd displays the file transfer window for pxelinux.0 with 0 bytes transferred.

Any ideas?

My guess is that your ROM image (loaded from floppy) doesn't support PXE but expects etherboot mknbi image instead.

workaround
use mknbi program to make a bootable image from vmlinuz + initrd.gz
use the same kernel append line as found in geexbox .cfg file

Remember you'll also need NFS for 2nd boot stage

Okay, thanks! I can now boot over the network. Using mknbi I did something like this to create the boot image:

mkelf-linux -append="initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 rw init=linuxrc boot=nfs splash=silent vga=0x315 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr nfsroot=192.168.1.100:/tftpboot/GEEXBOX" /tmp/GEEXBOX/boot/vmlinuz /tmp/GEEXBOX/boot/initrd.gz > /tmp/GEEXBOX/boot/etherboot.0

Ummm, now I have another problem. Seems as though it can't see / find / mount the dirs from the NFS server (i'm using Allegro, and have it set up as the readme file states, 192.168.1.100 is my windows box ip with allegro and tftpd installed on it).

This is what looks like the likely culprit after the inital GeexBox boot:

error, m
umount: /mnt/nfs: Unknown error 22

Any ideas?

Since my "mediaserver" runs Redmond code too, I didn't like the NFS idea to begin with:
http://www.geexbox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2858

What's wrong using TFTP instead of NFS for 2nd boot state?
Mini distros like http://pxes.sourceforge.net/ (universal thin client) can't be that wrong!

[quote="DualIP"]Since my "mediaserver" runs Redmond code too, I didn't like the NFS idea to begin with:
http://www.geexbox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2858

Sounds good, but mucking around with the source code and making a new initrd file is a little out of my comfort zone.

However, "An alternative is to simply add the "NFS files" to the initrd image." So just adding "bin.tar.bz2 /codecs /etc /sbin /usr" to the initrd.gz will make it magically work? So in my case, add the files to initrd.gz and run mknbi again to create a new boot image. Or am I confused?

You might get it working without recompile, by just making a new initrd.
However the kernel is compiled for 2MB ramdisk so the image won't fit.
workaround: Use append option to increase ramdisk size to 8192k

Obvious you have to customize the linuxrc script too

To get you started on the packing/unpacking of initrd:

unpacking initrd.gz:
gunzip initrd.gz (btw: this step dumps bootsplash logo)
mount -t ext2 -o loop initrd /mnt/ramdisk

Now you can copy the initrd contents to your "ramdisk" folder.
(over here /root/pxegeex/ramdisk)


To create initrd.gz
#gen 8M file
dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/ram8 bs=1024 count=8192
# format this file as ext2
mke2fs -m 0 -F /root/ram8
#mount the (empty) file
mount -t ext2 -o loop /root/ram8 /mnt/ramdisk
# copy required stuff
cp -dpR /root/pxegeex/ramdisk/* /mnt/ramdisk
#unmount
umount /mnt/ramdisk
# zip to destination
gzip -c /root/ram8 > /root/ram8.gz
#Here logo can be re-added, for now skip
mv /root/ram8.gz /mnt/tftp/geexbox/initrd.gz

In your case, extend the script so it creates the mknbi image

Okay, thanks. I'll give it a shot when I get some time later.