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Author Topic: PXE Booting with Multiple Initramfs - Extensions Won't Load  (Read 4668 times)

Offline sodface

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PXE Booting with Multiple Initramfs - Extensions Won't Load
« on: November 15, 2012, 07:39:31 PM »
Newbie here trying to PXE boot tiny core to a diskless workstation.  I like this method of adding extensions to the stock tiny core.  What I'm trying to do is pxe boot the stock tc kernel and initramfs plus an additional initramfs that contains additional extensions as well as the core x extensions in the cde directory from the stock .iso.

The PXE boot works fine.  TC boots to the command line but the GUI never starts.  I don't believe that any of the extensions are loading though the extra initramfs transfers fine and is integrated into the root file system.

I tried having the extensions in /opt/tce/optional and /tmp/tce/optional along with onboot.lst and xcore.lst files one directory above the optional directory.

What am I missing?  I have searched but I'm having trouble finding anything that looks helpful.

Offline gerald_clark

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Re: PXE Booting with Multiple Initramfs - Extensions Won't Load
« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2012, 08:00:41 PM »
Try the netboot instructions in the wiki.

Offline tinypoodle

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Re: PXE Booting with Multiple Initramfs - Extensions Won't Load
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2012, 08:49:56 PM »
Based on your description I couldn't spot a reason why that should not work.

Could you try to boot the same configuration with extlinux or syslinux from a hdd ext* or FAT* partition and see what happens then?
"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Niklaus Wirth - A Plea for Lean Software (1995)

Offline sodface

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Re: PXE Booting with Multiple Initramfs - Extensions Won't Load
« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2012, 09:13:16 PM »
I did go through the netbooting section of the wiki and used the tftplist method described there successfully prior to trying the additional initramfs method - which I can't get to work.  The netboot wiki entry even documents the initramfs method for loading just nfs-utils extension.  I don't see what I'm doing differently other than trying to load about 15 tczs vs just one as in the wiki.

Edit//  tinypoodle - I'm going to mess with it more tomorrow - you're suggestion just taking the pxe boot out of the equation?
« Last Edit: November 15, 2012, 09:18:38 PM by sodface »

Offline tinypoodle

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Re: PXE Booting with Multiple Initramfs - Extensions Won't Load
« Reply #4 on: November 15, 2012, 09:58:08 PM »
Yes.
"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Niklaus Wirth - A Plea for Lean Software (1995)

Offline sodface

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Re: PXE Booting with Multiple Initramfs - Extensions Won't Load
« Reply #5 on: November 16, 2012, 11:41:34 AM »
I went through /usr/bin/tce-setup and in accordance with the section after the comment "Next Check for any tcz initrd builtins" I built my second initrd to extract into /tmp/builtin/optional.

This worked.