Netbooting with installed apps (Solved)

[NetWalker]

Greetings!
Is there anyway or any idea to make tce dir available through netbooting?
So TC can keep the wished apps installed after the boot, without need of remastering the image.
Thanks in advance.

[NetWalker]

If anyone is insterested in the answer to the question, I solved the problem by remastering the distro, some days ago.
And modified it in the way that now it accepts the option tce=[t]ftp://SERVER_IP/TCEDIR_PATH.
I reprogrammed too, the way it takes to load the applications on the X server. In order to accpet a config file outside the gz core image, and now inside the tce dir (wherever it's located). Got that folowing the syntax bellow:

Code: [Select]

[CONFIGFILE.CONF]
startuplist="applicationa, applicationb, applicationc"
keepuplist="applicationc"
applicationa_conf="-v -D -x"
applicationc_conf="-p /path"
In that way, I could load up the sound drivers, start them, start the X server and the rdesktop client. Passing all needed configurations, including the ip of the W terminal server machine where the clients is supposed to connect to. And if the ip has changed, I can just modify the rdesktop_conf parameters inside de config file in the tcedir indicating the new ip, without any needing to remaster the distro.
So, I reached my objective of getting W terminal server clients served through network boot. With the machines starting without any hard disk and getting inside the W login screen just after the boot.
Amazing fast.

Any details, post or send a pm. It'll be a pleasure if this solution could help anybody else.

Thumbs up to TinyCore!

PS.: the option keepuplist inside the config file is used to keep some applications up running and/or the user inside some of them, when it's closed by the standard ways.

[danielibarnes]

Is there any interest in adding this feature to the tce= boot parameter for 2.3? The trick is that dhcp.sh is executed after extensions are loaded (as of 2.3), so it would have to detect this syntax, wait for DHCP to finish, then download all of the extensions in the given path (to /tmp/tce I presume) and execute the tce loading logic.

Does anyone have any thoughts? I used the "terminal server" feature for the first time today, and I was impressed. My first thought was that being able to load extensions this way would be really useful.

[gerald_clark]

I like it.
Much lighter than the tce=nfs://server:/directory i was considering.
However, NFS would allow tcz extensions to function without having to copy them to RAM, and would allow for
each netbooted TC machine to install its own extensions in its networked tce directory.

[alu]

it's interesting, but i don't get the logic right, or put it differently, would it enable to have a terminal-server behavior with all extensions saved on the server, and just the tc/mc image on the terminal (without extensions)? or everything on the server side (extensions and tc/mc images)? i am asking because i would like to have a "empty" terminal from which i can load tc/mc image and extensions placed on a server via a wifi connection.

[danielibarnes]

i would like to have a "empty" terminal from which i can load tc/mc image and extensions placed on a server via a wifi connection.

It is possible right now to create an extension mirror on your server and use the control panel on the clients to change the repository location.

[gerald_clark]

I don't believe the location of the repository is the issue.
I think the point is to have a workstation with no local storage that
can pxeboot TC and load its own persistant set of extensions over the network.
This can be accomplished with either tftp or NFS.
Tftp is a much lighter protocol already included.
NFS requires a protocol stack.
Tftp needs to load the extesnions into RAM.
NFS allows loop mounting the extensions from an NFS mounted directory.
NFS would also allow pivoting to an NFS root.

I was an early NSLU2 contributer, and authored several wiki articles, one of which was
on how to boot to an NFS root.

[alu]

interesting, though i would need a wired connection; NFS looks like an interesting way to explore, i'd like to see more on that

[gerald_clark]

True, no wireless PXE.

[^thehatsrule^]

[split code modification and related discussion to http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=2705.0]