Embedded Systems

Frontend computers (FEC) that are running with a ramdisk require the configuration of PXE.

The required information to configure/modify a FEC can be found in TFTPServer, PXE and finally the applications that should be running on the FEC in NFSinit.

For data persistence see NFSdata

Goals

Kernel Cmdline

nfsinit=server:path

path from server will be mounted read-only to /opt/nfsinit. Any program in /opt/nfsinit/HOSTNAME will be executed on boot.

By default server is the tftp server and path will test /common/usr/export/nfsinit, /common/export/nfsinit, /export/nfsinit, /nfsinit

ip=client-ip:server-ip

default linux kernel static ip configuration. If given no dhcp will be used. See https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/nfsroot.txt

dhcp=timeout:panic

timeout (default 30): During boot, wait timeout second for an ip address. panic (default 60): "sh" drop to a shell. "0" Ignore, background dhcp requests are still done. Any other number, wait seconds the reboot.

Software

The following software is baked into the initramfs: Busybox, Dropbear, net-snmp, ldconfig

FAQ

Is the ramdisk based on el5 or el6?
el5 has libc 2.5, el6 has 2.12. Check on the booted fec by ls /lib/libc*

is it 32bit or 64bit
uname -m. 64bit is called x86_64, 32bit is called i686