[caiman-discuss] [Fwd: Re: Diskless boot?]

[Lyle Scheer]

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Hi,

I'm not on your alias, but Dave below invited commentary.

I work in WWOPS manufacturing, and having the ability for a RAM disk
based LiveCD type boot over the network (PXEboot or similar) would be a
boon to manufacturing processes.

Imagine hundreds of computers needing to test at the same time.  A ZFS
mounted system over a server would work, but tends to exercise the
server more than it exercises the units being tested.  Managing hundreds
of CDROMs or USB sticks is challenging, especially around retiring old
worn media or upgrading the OS or tests.

Using PXEboot to load a miniroot, within containing a highly compressed
filesystem to be uncompressed in RAM would be rather nice.  Having tools
and scripts in the distribution to automatically create such a system
would be nicer, as well as the ability to trim the distribution down to
a minimum.

Most systems today are built with more than 2Gb of RAM, we're all using
64 bit processors, and most of our switching is gigabit ethernet, so the
size of the miniroot can be greater than 250Mb.

I suspect similar tools would be of interest to other customers as well.
~ Certainly I've seen this proof of concept in Gentoo and Centos linux
flavors.

- - Lyle

- -------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Diskless boot?
Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 12:29:12 -0400
From: Dave Miner <Dave.Miner at Sun.COM>
To: Darren J Moffat <Darren.Moffat at Sun.COM>
CC: LaoTsao(Dr. Tsao) <Hung-Sheng.Tsao at Sun.COM>, John Cecere
<John.Cecere at Sun.COM>, Michael Schuster <Michael.Schuster at Sun.COM>,
Ben.Taylor at Sun.COM, solx86-interest at sun.com, s10-users at sun.com
References: <48237ACD.4090500 at Sun.COM> <48243A35.6010708 at sun.com>
<4824446D.6050601 at sun.com> <48245FB9.5050303 at sun.com>
<48246186.1070207 at sun.com> <482467B5.5040402 at sun.com>
<482469DC.4080207 at Sun.COM>

Darren J Moffat wrote:
| LaoTsao(Dr. Tsao) wrote:
|>
|>       http://opensolaris.org/os/project/caiman/Snap_Upgrade/
|>
|>
|>
|>       Investigate
|>
|>     * Upgrade with DSR
|>           o What needs to be there for IPS to eval and upgrade a pre-IPS
|>             image?
|>     * Zone upgrade
|>           o Cloned zones space usage in upgraded BE
|>           o Additional software in zones
|>     * _* Diskless clients
|>       *_
|>           o _* Do we need to continue to support this*_
|
| That is a QUESTION for investigation for that upgrade project not a
| commitment that diskless clients are going way.
|

Absolutely right.  I have repeatedly stated in presentations about
Caiman that what would happen to diskless support is a subject for
investigation (and that remains true, it's not a high priority yet), but
that I am also of the starting opinion that the diskless architecture we
currently have, which was designed for doing cheap desktops like the Sun
3/60, may not be the best one for today's uses.  As always, if you have
specific uses for a network booting model, please drop us a note on
caiman-discuss at opensolaris.org to describe your use case(s).

Dave
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