Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[ragtag]

Hi,

I have a working server that I use to PXE boot CentOS installations and a GParted live cd, but I wanted to add puppy there too. It basically boots into Ubuntu 9.04 grub, and let's me pick stuff from there.

I've gotten as far as puppy starting to boot, but then it stops with the following error.

[Béèm]

Beginners is also about booting.

I remember having seen posts about PXE boot.

With the puppysearch link in my sig, you probably find them easily.

[raffy]

Puppy does it by using an initrd.gz that contains the usual initrd plus the program sfs. See an example build for 4.12.

It's to be booted via TFTP: the kernel and then the initrd.gz.

I have no idea yet if Woof (Puppy5 builder) includes initrd creation for PXE-booting.

[jamesbond]

Puppy has all the necessary plumbing for a netboot since Barry's announcement of his humongous experiment (can't remember when, perhaps back to 412 days). Woof may or may not support it, but it's very straightforward to get *any* recent puppies and make it net-boot capable.

Basically all you need to do is to embed the SFS files into initrd.gz. I tried it yesterday with puppy stardust 431, I tried again today with Fatdog64, lupu 500, and puppeee rc5 --- by all means, all of them were never intended for netboot. But netbooting did work ! Amazing isn't ! (Thanks Barry !!!)

Of course your infrastructure must support large file transfer, and your workstation must have enough memory to keep these puppies in memory during the boot. I tested mine with gpxelinux, and hosted the files in a webserver. My test workstation has 512MB of RAM.

cheers!

[zo3adams]

Hi jamesbond, can you spell out exactly how you embedded the sfs files into initrd.gz ?

I just tried to replicate your success with lupu 500, placing the file lupu-500.sfs in the initrd-tree under pup_ro2. After repacking and downloading over network I'm getting the same message as with the default initrd.gz:

[raffy]

Yes, jamesbond, how did you do it?

zo3adams, ramdisksize must be large enough to give room to your initrd.gz, I understand that it is in KB, so multiply by 1024 your MB number.

For history, Barry experimented with humongous initrd in Puppy 2.16, see recap of what was started here.

[jamesbond]

1. Create a temporary directory somewhere
2. Copy the initrd.gz and the pup.sfs you want to embed into this temporary directory.
3. Detach this script, gunzip, and chmod +x the script, in the same temporary directory where you have initrd.gz and pup.sfs
4. Open terminal, and then run the script

[ragtag]

Thanks, that worked like a charm.

[zo3adams]

Indeed; thanks jamesbond! And thanks raffy for the pointer about ramdisk. What a great forum!

For reference, my problem earlier seems to be that I was using an sfs file and initrd.gz from a USB stick installation where I'd made some changes already.
Retrying with an unmodified initrd and sfs file from the lupu-500.iso file everything worked great. Suppose some system info specific to booting from USB was present in my first test.


Thanks again!

[jujoboro]

I understood that puppy was a linux lite and we search puppy like an choice to our project (200 hp5000t terminals with netbooting) because its have only 128 Mb in RAM.

We try with debian and work but i find any distro more lite. Can i do it with less than 128 Mb and How?.

Sorry for my english but it's not my Mother language

[raffy]

You must start with a small Puppy version and remaster it to contain only the applications that you need. Try searching for "fatfree" in this forum.

An initrd.gz of 60 MB or less will work given your 128 MB RAM constraint.

(Please PM me if you need more help.)

[rolfm]

using the embed_sfs script i get error messages:
cpio: dev/mmcblk0: Cannot mknod: Operation not permitted
cpio: dev/loop10: Cannot mknod: Operation not permitted
cpio: dev/sdc12: Cannot mknod: Operation not permitted
etc

---- is this to be expected?

the script still delivers a new initrd.gz

when i try to pxe boot with it, the proces is killed at the root switch
with a 'kernel panic' message.

i have 512mb ram

--- do i need to give special parameters with the append?

supposing these problems can be solved:
-- is it then possible to work with a diskless pxe client?

any help is appreciated,
rolf

[jamesbond]

Temporary directory must be in linux file system (ext2 or ext3). Best do it inside your /tmp directory.

[rolfm]

thanks jamesbond

embed script works in ext2/3 system (btw not in ext4 (?))
boot is ok with a 'regular' computer.

my next obstacle is that PXE boot on a diskless system with 256Mb ram
runs out of memory.

rolf

[omf]

Starting in the iso dir and the embed-sfs.sh setup in /tmp already here is what I did:

cp initrd.gz /tmp/
cp lupu-501.sfs /tmp/
cd /tmp
./embed_sfs.sh lupu-501.sfs

I get the following output