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--- soc:2009:pravin:journal:fedora11bko [2009/07/20 07:10]
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+++ soc:2009:pravin:journal:fedora11bko [2009/07/27 05:35] (current)
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-====== Fedora over NFS ======
+====== Fedora 11 live over NFS ======
-booting Fedora over NFS
+Trying to see if Fedora 11 live can boot over NFS.\\
-Plan is to export the ISO over NFS from my laptop and see if it works.
+The reasoning behind this experimentation is that, if it works over NFS then it may help in locating the problem.
+==== Testing NFS setup ====
+Exported the "/var/www" ( because it contains all the ISO images) over NFS.  Following is the excerpt from ''/etc/exports''
+<code>
+/var/www *(ro,async)
+</code>
+This NFS volume does get mounted properly on local machine.
+<code>
+sudo mount 192.168.111.11:/var/www mpoint
+$ mount
+.168.111.11:/var/www on /home/pravin/Etherboot/mpoint type nfs (rw,addr=192.168.111.11)
+</code>
+==== Testing the NFS mount from virtualization ====
+Fedora 11 live cd was booted with virtualBox. The network was working and even the host machine was accissible as the URL http://192.168.111.11 did correctly resolved to Host website.\\
+But NFS mount failed with following error.
+<code>
+# mount 192.168.111.11:/var/www /home/liveuser/mpoint/
+mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting 192.168.111.11:/var/www
+</code>
+Why would this fail if mounting from localhost is working fine?
+Got help from rwrc, and fixed the problem.\\
+It seems one more option has to be added to export options ''insecure'', restating the explanation given by rwcr
+<code>
+rwcr: Try making it /var/www *(ro,async,insecure)
+rwcr: Linux generally requires NFS requests to come from privileged ports, and the Fedora livecd might be using a nonstandard NFS mounter that doesn't do that.
+</code>
+===== Next step : mount NFS partition from initramfs =====
+Debian uses special program called ''nfsmount'' for NFS mounting at boot time, I will try out both. The mount command and nfsmount utility.\\
+Also, the kernel module be needed.
+Following modules and executable ''/sbin/mount.nfs'' was needed for NFS to work
+   - sunrpc.ko
+   - lockd.ko
+   - auth_rpcgss.ko
+   - nfs_acl.ko
+   - nfs.ko
+In addition to this, I had to pass option ''-o nolock'' for mount to work without problems
+<code>
+mount "${NFS_PATH} /iso -o nolock"
+mount /iso/Fedora-11-i686-Live.iso /sysroot -o loop -o ro
+</code>
+NFS works fine in run level 3. also one can start the GUI with ''startx'' after logging in as ''root'' from multiuser prompt.\\
+The only issue with NFS_Fedora is that ''plymountd'' still creates a problem and is disabled and it somehow stops GUI coming up automatically.\\
+So, the user need to login in run-level 3 and then do the ''startx''
+==== HTTPFS improvement ====
+Some progress has been done on HTTPFS front also.  Till now, all the tests of booting over HTTPFS were done using ''qemu'' which is inherently slow as it is emulation.
+When same tests were run on vmware, which is much faster, errors started comming after runlevel - 3 login prompt\\
+Following are the errors, which are quite same as those errors which use to come around sendmail daemon before.
+<code>
+# startx
+-bash: /usr/bin/startx: Input/output error
+# top
+top : error while loading shared libraries: /lib/libncursesw.so.5: cannot read file data: Input/output error
+EXT4-fs error (device dm-0): ext4_find_entry: reading directory #10651 offset 0
+</code>
+With this observation, we can claim that errors are thrown because there is delay in response from fuse.  The ext4-fs is giving up because of this delay.\\
+Now, I need to find a way to increase the tolerance for this delay.
+===== Removing plymouth =====
+As marc has suggested, remove ''plymount'' from original iso, and see if it works without plymount.
+If it doesn't then blame can be surely put on ''plymount'' and not the network related complications. \\
+==== Modifying ISO ====
+Now, the question is, how to add new initramfs into ISO and still keep it bootable?\\
+From Remastering Knoppix Howto, following is the command which works for knoppix
+<code>
+mkisofs -pad -l -r -J -v -V "KNOPPIX" -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 \
+   -boot-info-table -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat \
+   -hide-rr-moved -o /mnt/hda1/knx/knoppix.iso /mnt/hda1/knx/master
+</code>
+and I need to modify it, so that it will work for fedora.
+<code>
+mkisofs -pad -l -r -J -v -V "Fedora-11-i686-Live" -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 \
+   -boot-info-table -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \
+   -hide-rr-moved -o /var/www/iso/fedora_11.iso /home/pravin/Etherboot/git/BKO.git/pxeknife/red_hat/fedora_11_live_cd/newfedora
+</code>
+===== running startx from single user mode =====
+Tried an experiment of running ''startx'' from single user mode and see if it works.\\
+Well it did not worked atall.
+===== Problem Found =====
+With help of andyTim, the cause of problem has been located.\\
+The ''network'' and ''NetworkManager'' do restart the networking which breaks the existing HTTPFS mount.
+===== Solution =====
+The temporary solution tried is delete both of following files
+  - ''/etc/init.d/network''
+  - ''/etc/init.d/NetworkManager''
+So, user has to first boot into single user mode, delete above files,
+and then boot into runlevel 5.

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