PXE and newer FC5/FC6 kernel problems

[Paul-Erik Törrönen]

Hello,

I've been running for some time now a setup where I have a
tftp/dhcp/nfs-server and a diskless mediaplayer (stock Intel setup) on a
local network. The mediaplayer has done a PXE-boot from the server and
everything has been smooth. Both the server as well as the mediaplayer
have been running FC5 with the 2.6.17-1.2187 kernel. The tftpboot-stuff
has been created/managed with the system-config-netboot program.

However the more recent kernels have had a number of problems, some
still unsolved.

For starters, the newer kernels require that I define
ramdisk_blocksize=1024 as an additional boot-parameter.

At the moment I can get the FC5 mediabox to boot up with the new kernel,
but it now is unable to mount a number of directories, such as /var/lock
and /var/run, as readwrite. This of course wreaks havoc on the whole
functionality. The said directories are mentioned in the
snapshot/files-file, so there is something else broken in the whole
setup.

I also set up a basic FC6-installation to be booted from the server, but
using that installation to boot the mediaplayer fails at a separate
error. It complains that the /tftpboot/boot/mediaplayerfc6/root is not
mountable, although I can NFS-mount this fine from another workstation
in the same local network. Creating the FC6 setup on the server with the
system-config-netboot does not give any errors.

Neither case gives off any errors in the server logs
(messages/dmesg/secure).

I'm a bit stumped at this point so I would really appreciate if anyone
could give a hint where to look for next or whether I have missed
something obvious.

Poltsi

-- 
Paul-Erik Törrönen
poltsi at 777-team.org
+358 40 703 1231
http://poltsi.fi/