LiveCDShareThisCD

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   ''Aufs (aufs.sourceforge.net) seems to be a rewrite of Unionfs. SLAX has already moved over to it, and it is reported to be more reliable and less buggy. I've not had a look at the code and so I don't know what its NFS support is like --PhillipLougher2''

Summary

It should be possible to share a running live CD on the network, for use by thin clients or other machines without a CD drive.

Rationale

Being able to share a live CD with machines that don't have a CD-ROM drive for installation is useful. Sharing the live CD to machines which doesn't have a CD-ROM can be useful too, by treating the live CD as a poor-man's server.

Use cases

  • Julia wants to install Ubuntu on her ultraportable laptop with no CD-ROM. She doesn't know too much about computers and wouldn't be able to set up a DHCP server and netboot, but she reads that sharing the live CD works for installing too, so she does that and installs Ubuntu and is happy.
  • Sebastian works in a public library. To avoid problems with people changing the setup of the clients or taking the CDs, they have a live CD setup which is then distributed to all the thin clients. He uses a persistent setup to store the configuration files.

Scope

Affects the live seeds, casper and a new tool which will allow the user to control sharing of the live CD.

Design and implementation

Write a simple graphical tool which does the following:

  • Write a configuration file which will make dhcp3-server serve a tftp-bootable image with suitable parameters for it to pick the right nfsroot parameter.

  • Makes the dhcp server use the abovementioned file as the configuration file.

  • Puts a configuration file for pxelinux in /var/lib/tftpboot

  • Allows the user to start and stop the DHCP and tftpd server.
  • The default initramfs already supports NFS root, so it will be used, either copied or symlinked into the tftd's root directory.

    • Maybe the shellscript "knoppix-terminalserver" would be a good start. Since it uses dialog+Xdialog, it can be run "graphically" in textmode as well as in X. It's basically a configuration frontend for pxelinux, TFTP, DHCP and NFS. Needs some work to run in installed mode, since it's designed to run from the live DVD. -KlausKnopper

Outstanding issues

  • Should we be able to share CDs for other architectures or share other CDs?
  • What do we do about already-configured network interfaces and conflicts with other DHCP servers?
  • NFS and unionfs haven't been friendly in the past. This needs to be investigated and if they still aren't we either need to fix this or defer the spec until it's fixed.

    • they still aren't (files missing on the client, problems with directory renames, inexplicable errors when overwriting files). unionfs is even known to be very unstable running on local drives only, if SMP and/or PREEMPT are enabled in the kernel. Just a personal comment. Unfortunately, there is no better choice for Knoppix right now, that's about the only reason I'm using it. -KlausKnopper

      Aufs (aufs.sourceforge.net) seems to be a rewrite of Unionfs. SLAX has already moved over to it, and it is reported to be more reliable and less buggy. I've not had a look at the code and so I don't know what its NFS support is like --PhillipLougher2

CategorySpec

LiveCDShareThisCD (last edited 2008-08-06 17:00:57 by localhost)