Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

damonq
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Re: Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

Postby damonq » Wed Jul 31, 2013 8:45 pm

bigfoot,
thanks for the quick reply,
Please forgive my ignorance if I sound like a noob, I am.
In regards to dhcpd.conf, I ask because most of the online documentation I've come across for upgrading pxelinux.0 to gpxelinux.0 or ipxelinux.0 files refers to changing this setting in this file. But since amahi overwrites this setting pxebooting isos is stuck using tftp which is unbearably slow. Alot of the newer documentation for pxe booting seems to refer to http booting as one of the faster methods but I haven't been able to compare yet.

Could you clarify about the http booting parameters? I searched the wiki but can't seem to find anything specific. link?

Thanks again,
damon

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bigfoot65
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Re: Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

Postby bigfoot65 » Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:14 am

You will not be able to modify dhcp.conf if Amahi is integrated with it. It will get re-written. Really no reason to modify if you want to use netboot. It works as is last time I tried.

Check out the wiki article below. It gives an example of booting http I believe.
https://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Netboo ... Tutorial_2

We do have some apps in BETA that are netboot capable. I could give you access to one or two, but need you to PM me your amahi.org user name.

Hope this helps.
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damonq
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Re: Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

Postby damonq » Thu Aug 01, 2013 9:01 pm

bigfoot,
thanks again for the reply and the link, but I was the author of the that wiki entry. haha.
Although at the time the syslinux site had been down for some time so documentation was very scarce and booting isos with the memdisk module was worthless. It seems to have come a long way since.

I got a chance to do some more testing today.
1. Created a new webapp called "netboot" in the amahi console.
2. Initially I tried to override the default root path "/var/hda/web-apps/netboot/html/" to "usr/share/amahi-netboot/tftp/images"
But it was a no go!
3. I tried creating a soft link to the iso directory and it seems to have worked!

sudo ln -s usr/share/amahi-netboot/tftp/images /var/hda/web-apps/netboot/html/

Please let me know if this is ill-advised. Not quite there yet, but progress.

As far as pointing to the pxelinux.0 vs ipxe/ipxelinux.0/gpxelinux.0 bootloader in the dhcpd.conf file , I can refer to to this forum post contrasting the two.http://forum.ipxe.org/showthread.php?tid=6879
88 second boot time for an iso over tfpt
8-10 second boot time for an iso over http on 100Mb connection

To me, this merits further investigation, especially for someone with more linux knowledge me

For now, using NFS seems to give good results. I can attest booting and running openElec over NFS is a large improvement vs a off usb drive.
I've gotten quite a bit of linux and dos based tools up and running so far. I'll post my config files if anyone interested

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Re: Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

Postby bigfoot65 » Fri Aug 02, 2013 5:23 am

Sorry, did not realize you were the author LOL Will have to find out what writes to that file in order to make the change. Can you please file a bug with all the details. This will help us keep track of progress.
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damonq
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Re: Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

Postby damonq » Sun Aug 04, 2013 3:15 pm

have tested and tweaked about 2 dozen manually added apps/isos so far.

I do have a request/demand about changing the default install directory
currently:
/usr/share/amahi-netboot/tftp/
to just:
/tfpt or /tftpboot

3 Reasons
1. If I remember correctly, there is syslinux(pxelinux) limitation regarding the length of parameters that can be passed to it

LABEL openelec 306
MENU LABEL openelec 3.06 stable
KERNEL /images/openelec306/system/KERNEL
APPEND ip=dhcp boot=NFS=192.168.1.95:/usr/share/amahi-netboot/tftp/images/openelec306/system disk=NFS=192.168.1.95:/usr/share/amahi-netboot/tftp/images/openelec306/storage quiet

APPEND is one line!
2. typos are a PITA to debug
3. Not very scalable
For a simple setup it's ok but when you add some x86 + x64 live cd's, installs, boot cds, hardware utilities, antivirus tools, pxe-booting openelec, windows tools those directories get much longer quickly unless you put everything in the same folder.

On a stock ubuntu it's easily changed

Code: Select all

sudo nano /etc/default/tftpd-hpa TFTP_DIRECTORY="/usr/share/amahi-netboot/tftp" to TFTP_DIRECTORY="/tftp" sudo service tftpd-hpa restart
This does NOT have any effect in amahi? Tried on 2 hdas. Will still boot to /usr/share/amahi-netboot/tftp

Can anyone else replicate this problem? on fedora?
Last edited by damonq on Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:07 pm, edited 3 times in total.

damonq
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Re: Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

Postby damonq » Sun Aug 04, 2013 5:57 pm

Bigfoot
Was going to submit a bug but there was an open one there already with similar circumstances https://bugs.amahi.org/issues/818 from a couple years ago.

Found a workaround for now
On Ubuntu 12.04.2
I located the pxelinux.0 entry in /usr/bin/hdactl line 726
upon editing to i/g pxelinux.0, undionly.kpxe and rebooting
settings stayed permanent in /etc/dhcpd.conf

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bigfoot65
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Re: Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

Postby bigfoot65 » Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:19 pm

Funny I was thinking there might be something related to hdactl with this one. You beat me too it :)

EDIT: To change the path, you could use a symbolic link from the current location to a new one.

This would be a good thing to add to the wiki as well.
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damonq
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Re: Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

Postby damonq » Mon Aug 05, 2013 7:18 pm

Found it in /etc/inetd.conf
Commented out line 32
#tftp dgram udp4 wait root /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -s /usr/share/amahi-netboot/tftp

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Re: Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

Postby bigfoot65 » Tue Aug 06, 2013 5:07 am

Good to know. Might be worth adding your notes to the wiki. Would it be better to change the path or comment it out?
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damonq
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Re: Amahi Netboot: Beta Testers Needed!

Postby damonq » Tue Aug 06, 2013 1:44 pm

Sorry, I should been more complete,
I guess tftpa-hpa can run as it's on daemon negating the need for inetd to be used to call it.
so
I also edited /etc/default/tftp-hpa

Code: Select all

RUN_DAEMON="yes" TFTP_USERNAME="tftp" TFTP_DIRECTORY="/tftpboot/" TFTP_ADDRESS="0.0.0.0:69" TFTP_OPTIONS="-s -c -l -vv /tftpboot" ##--secure --create --listen --verbose
And Voila, everything works!

I was just thinking it might be ALOT easier to rewrite/update the netboot install script/plugin, than have inexperienced users go about hacking their hdactl and other other config files.

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