PXEBoot Diskless/Stateless issues
Posted: 2013/01/31 01:33:09
Hi -- Long time admin but first time poster here so be gentle with me... I'm having a stroke trying to get my system to boot via a PXE initrd image to a diskless system. The objective is to install a generic CentOS 6.3 image to a ramdrive and run it from there. No data will need to be stored/kept so rebooting the system would be akin to a brand new installation. There are several sites out there that provide how-to's on PXE boot installation - most of which require an NFS or HTTP server to serve up a root FS. This doesn't, however, meet my needs and almost none of them include the ramdisk booting component.
Here's where I am:
Main system installed and working well: CentOS (2.6.32-279.19.1.el6.x86_64)
PXEboot working well with tftp-server (0.49-7.el6)
DHCP is serving the PXE boot server information and the client is getting the menus.
dracut-kernel and -network installed (004-284.el6_3.1)
Here's my PXE detail:
kernel Node/vmlinuz
append initrd=Node/initramfs.img root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=524288 rw ip=dhcp
The problem I'm hitting is that the root filesystem isn't mounting properly. I get following errors:
dracut warning: No root device "block:/dev/ram0" found.
and/or (depending on PXE variables)
RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
and/or
No filesystem could mount root
This has been driving me nuts! Does anyone have any thoughts/experience with ramdisk/stateless installations that don't use NFS/http? Help?
Scott
Some of the installation reference material:
https://coda.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/CentOS6_Linux_Diskless_Setup
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/DisklessClients
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/red-hat-31/building-a-diskless-redhat-enterprise-linux-cluster-765393/
Here's where I am:
Main system installed and working well: CentOS (2.6.32-279.19.1.el6.x86_64)
PXEboot working well with tftp-server (0.49-7.el6)
DHCP is serving the PXE boot server information and the client is getting the menus.
dracut-kernel and -network installed (004-284.el6_3.1)
Here's my PXE detail:
kernel Node/vmlinuz
append initrd=Node/initramfs.img root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=524288 rw ip=dhcp
The problem I'm hitting is that the root filesystem isn't mounting properly. I get following errors:
dracut warning: No root device "block:/dev/ram0" found.
and/or (depending on PXE variables)
RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0
and/or
No filesystem could mount root
This has been driving me nuts! Does anyone have any thoughts/experience with ramdisk/stateless installations that don't use NFS/http? Help?
Scott
Some of the installation reference material:
https://coda.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/CentOS6_Linux_Diskless_Setup
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/DisklessClients
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/red-hat-31/building-a-diskless-redhat-enterprise-linux-cluster-765393/