LinuxMCE - User contributions [en]

ASUS P1 AH2

2008-02-12T20:13:19Z

Rrambo:

[[Category: Hardware]]
[[Category: Barebones]]

'''ASUS P1-AH2 Barebones'''

Specs:
CPU Type AMD Athlon 64/FX/X2 up to 4600+ GHz
CPU Socket AMD Socket AM2
FSB 1000MHz HyperTransport
North Bridge NVIDIA GeForce 6150
Memory slot 2 x 240Pin
Memory Type Supported DDR2 667/800
Max Memory Supported 2GB
Dual Channel Memory Supported YesPCI Express None
PCI 2
IDE ATA 1 x ATA 133
Serial ATA 2 x SATAII 300
Onboard Video GeForce 6150
Onboard Audio Azalia ALC86-DTS
Channel 6-CH
Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
3.5" Internal bays 1
5.25" External bays 1
Front USB 2
Front IEEE 1394 2
Front S/PDIF Out Yes
Front Audio Ports 2 jacks
Card Reader 3 in 1
PS/2 2
COM 1
LPT 1
VGA 1 x DVI
1 x D-sub
TV-Out S-Video + RCA
Rear USB 2
Rear Audio Ports 3 jacks
Power Supply
Power Supply 250W (PFC)

Comments:

With bios version 0404 you can install AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPUs up to 6000+, the specs above were prior to this bios release. Very sturdy well built pc with a small footprint. I currently do not have a capture card in mine, but have read reviews stating that a capture card will fit but the install will be tight. I am currently running a Sempron 3000+ with 1GB ram and as a hybrid this machine works beautifully. Quick install DVD works fine with no video card related issues due to the nvidia 6150. Also am using spdif optical out with no issues. The only negative for this machine is that the spdif out is on the FRONT of the machine. So if you're using this out in the open you'll have to deal with looking at a cable coming out of the front if you use the optical out. Since I'm not doing any video capture, I can't comment much on performance, but running UI2 with overlay and playing .avi movies the machine doesn't even break a sweat. With the Sempron 3000+ I cannot play 1080p but can play 720p with no problems.

Link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856110057

ASUS P1 AH2

2008-02-12T20:11:32Z

Rrambo:

[[Category: Hardware]]
[[Category: Barebones]]

'''ASUS P1-AH2 Barebones'''

Specs:
CPU Type AMD Althon 64/FX/X2 up to 4600+ GHz
CPU Socket AMD Socket AM2
FSB 1000MHz HyperTransport
North Bridge NVIDIA GeForce 6150
Memory slot 2 x 240Pin
Memory Type Supported DDR2 667/800
Max Memory Supported 2GB
Dual Channel Memory Supported YesPCI Express None
PCI 2
IDE ATA 1 x ATA 133
Serial ATA 2 x SATAII 300
Onboard Video GeForce 6150
Onboard Audio Azalia ALC86-DTS
Channel 6-CH
Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
3.5" Internal bays 1
5.25" External bays 1
Front USB 2
Front IEEE 1394 2
Front S/PDIF Out Yes
Front Audio Ports 2 jacks
Card Reader 3 in 1
PS/2 2
COM 1
LPT 1
VGA 1 x DVI
1 x D-sub
TV-Out S-Video + RCA
Rear USB 2
Rear Audio Ports 3 jacks
Power Supply
Power Supply 250W (PFC)

Comments:

With bios version 0404 you can install a AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPUs up to 6000+ the specs above were prior to this bios release. Very sturdy well built pc with a small footprint. I currently do not have a capture card in mine, but have read reviews stating that a capture card will fit but the install will be tight. I am currently running a Sempron 3000+ with 1GB ram and as a hybrid this machine works beautifully. Quick install DVD works fine with no video card related issues due to the nvidia 6150. Also am using spdif optical out with no issues. The only negative for this machine is that the spdif out is on the FRONT of the machine. So if you're using this out in the open you'll have to deal with looking at a cable coming out of the front if you use the optical out. Since I'm not doing any video capture, I can't comment much on performance, but running UI2 with overlay and playing .avi movies the machine doesn't even break a sweat. With the Sempron 3000+ I cannot play 1080p but can play 720p with no problems.

Link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856110057

ASUS P1 AH2

2008-02-12T20:08:37Z

Rrambo: New page: '''ASUS P1-AH2 Barebones''' Specs: CPU Type AMD Althon 64/FX/X2 up to 4600+ GHz CPU Socket AMD Socket AM2 FSB 1000MHz HyperTransport North Bridge NVIDIA GeForce 6150 ...

'''ASUS P1-AH2 Barebones'''

Specs:
CPU Type AMD Althon 64/FX/X2 up to 4600+ GHz
CPU Socket AMD Socket AM2
FSB 1000MHz HyperTransport
North Bridge NVIDIA GeForce 6150
Memory slot 2 x 240Pin
Memory Type Supported DDR2 667/800
Max Memory Supported 2GB
Dual Channel Memory Supported YesPCI Express None
PCI 2
IDE ATA 1 x ATA 133
Serial ATA 2 x SATAII 300
Onboard Video GeForce 6150
Onboard Audio Azalia ALC86-DTS
Channel 6-CH
Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
3.5" Internal bays 1
5.25" External bays 1
Front USB 2
Front IEEE 1394 2
Front S/PDIF Out Yes
Front Audio Ports 2 jacks
Card Reader 3 in 1
PS/2 2
COM 1
LPT 1
VGA 1 x DVI
1 x D-sub
TV-Out S-Video + RCA
Rear USB 2
Rear Audio Ports 3 jacks
Power Supply
Power Supply 250W (PFC)

Comments:

With bios version 0404 you can install a AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPUs up to 6000+ the specs above were prior to this bios release. Very sturdy well built pc with a small footprint. I currently do not have a capture card in mine, but have read reviews stating that a capture card will fit but the install will be tight. I am currently running a Sempron 3000+ with 1GB ram and as a hybrid this machine works beautifully. Quick install DVD works fine with no video card related issues due to the nvidia 6150. Also am using spdif optical out with no issues. The only negative for this machine is that the spdif out is on the FRONT of the machine. So if you're using this out in the open you'll have to deal with looking at a cable coming out of the front if you use the optical out. Since I'm not doing any video capture, I can't comment much on performance, but running UI2 with overlay and playing .avi movies the machine doesn't even break a sweat. With the Sempron 3000+ I cannot play 1080p but can play 720p with no problems.

Automatic diskless boot of media directors

2008-02-12T19:33:00Z

Rrambo: /* Setup the media director in LinuxMCE */

[[Category: Tutorials]]
[[Category: Networking]]
[[Category: Programmer's Guide]]
{| align="right"
| __TOC__
|}
LinuxMCE allows [[media director]]s to be booted over the network. This means that you can boot up thin clients without hard drives, or systems with other operating systems without affecting what is already on the disk.

==How to set it up==
===Enable PXE boot===
This is also known as network boot and can be accessed in your computer's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS BIOS]. The exact procedure varies depending on your PC. Normally you press F2 or DEL right after turning the PC on to enter the BIOS settings. There is then usually an advanced option to enable this.

===Set the correct boot order===
You are also going to want to set the boot order in the BIOS so the network boot comes first, and your hard drive second. However most BIOS's will make you first enable network boot, save your changes, restart the computer, and then enter the BIOS settings a second time to set the boot order.

===Determine your network card's MAC address===

'''This step is not needed since version 7.04'''

<s>When network boot is working you should see at bootup the PC's mac address, and a messages about trying to contact a DHCP server, or trying to find a network boot image. This will be a new message you didn't see before and it means network boot is active on the PC. It will usually try for about 10 seconds to do a network boot image, and then give up and boot off the hard drive. This is what you want. When you see the message that it is trying to do the network boot, write down the mac address.

You can also get the mac address in Windows by running IPCONFIG command prompt, or in Linux by typing ifconfig as root from a console or a terminal.</s>

===Setup the media director in LinuxMCE===

'''This step is not needed since version 7.04'''

<s>In LinuxMCE Admin go to '''Wizard > Devices > Media Directors'''. Add the media director if this is a new one, and set the mac address. The mac address should be a series of six 2 character sequences separated by colons, like this: 1A:00:F2:21:23:9F

Click 'update' to save your changes, and then click 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'. Wait for the popup window to finish. If this is a new media director you just added, go to Wizard, Restart and click 'Quick Reload Router' so the Router is aware of this new device.</s>

===Boot up from the network===
Now turn on the PC. You should see that it gets an IP address and boots into the media director software. The first time you boot it, it can take up to 30 minutes to boot because it will be installing a lot of the software on the diskless image on the core.

After some time, you will see the avwizard screen where you can choose your UI, resolution and so forth. After finishing the avwizard, the system will setup your interface and eventually you will be prompted by the setup wizard where you should choose the media center setup and then go through your typical setup for this new MD.

==How to use it==
[[Using LinuxMCE]]. If this media director has a hard drive in it that contains another operating system (like Windows or Linux), then from the media director's on-screen orbiter, or from any other orbiter that is currently controlling that media director, hit the 'power' button and choose 'restart as windows/linux' to boot up the computer off the hard drive and use it like a normal PC. Then choose 'restart as LinuxMCE' from the orbiter to boot it back again into LinuxMCE.

==Troubleshooting==
===PXE-Boot hangs up, looping......===

I got an Asus A7N8X-deluxe board, with two NICs onboard, when I connect one of them the md tries to boot via PXE, everything seems to go its way, until, the line: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0 comes up, for about 20 seconds and after this.
After this, the last block written:

IP-Config eth0 complete (from 192.168.1.23)
adr: 192.168.80.255 broadcast: 192.168.80.255 netmask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 192.168.80.1 dns0: 192.168.80.1 dns1: 0.0.0.0
rootserver: 192.168.80.1 rootpath: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0

is repeated about hours in a really fast way.....

====Answer====
It is switching nics on you during the pxe boot. Disabling one of the on-board nics.

:''Source: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3521.0''

==GRUB PXE network boot==
In some situations, it may be more appropriate to use GNU GRUB bootloader:

#The machine does not support PXE booting directly (no boot-ROM).
#You can use a GRUB boot menu to decide wheter you want to boot LMCE or the native OS.
#Booting is a lot faster when you boot the native OS by skipping the network step.
#GRUB allows for easy adjustments of the boot parameters at boot-time.

This is described in detail at [[GRUB PXE network boot]].

== Reduce boot time ==
When using diskless boot, all data have to be read over the network connection. This can cause boot up times longer than desirable. To avoid long boot up times, you can tune the NFS mount options of the NFS root. Specifically, the rsize and wsize options. You might do a Internet search for resources on this.
Another option is to implement suspending of the media director. Also know as standby, suspend or hibernate. This function is not integrated into LinuxMCE (yet), and requires some Linux shell hacking. See the [[Suspend]] article for more information.

==Programmer's guide==
The network boot images are contained in /usr/pluto/diskless/[deviceID]. If a network image is corrupted, just delete that directory, and re-run 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'.

When the user hits the power button to change which device is booted, the command is sent to "General Info Plugin", which updates /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/01-[mac address]. That file contains a line KERNEL or LOCALBOOT 0, depending on what the user wants to boot. If it's LOCALBOOT 0, then when the media director tries to do a network boot the Core will tell it to boot off the hard drive instead. General Info Plugin then sends the App Server running on that machine a command to reboot.

Since there is both a Linux and Windows version of App Server, if App Server is installed and running on the Windows PC, then LinuxMCE can still reboot it remotely back into the network boot even if it's running Windows. Also the Windows App Server utility gives you a tray icon to switch back to network boot.

==Other Network Cards==
If you get to the remote machine starting the boot process, but then fails with it unable to find eth0, the reason may be because the stock diskless image did not have your network card statically compiled. The linux image building process does allow for additional network modules to be loaded during the boot process. The installer that linuxmce uses builds this image from a base copy of the operating system (ubuntu) that is untar'd during the diskless setup process. It puts this into it's own directory that serves as a virtual harddrive for your diskless machine. In the /usr/pluto/diskless directory you should have a list of device numbers that correspond to your diskless machines. For example: '45' was the number for my diskless machine. Edit the file /usr/pluto/diskless/###/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add on your nic's module. In my case I edit /usr/pluto/diskless/45/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and added sky2. Then run the /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh script with the device number (directory name) of your diskless machine. In my case "/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh 45". This script builds the initrd image and puts it in the proper place (symlinks it actually).

The driver used in my machine was the 'sky2' driver for Marvell Gigabit ethernet cards. Other drivers will be located in the /usr/pluto/diskless/xx/lib/modules/2.xxx/kernel/drivers/net/ directory.

Automatic diskless boot of media directors

2008-02-12T19:32:11Z

Rrambo: /* Determine your network card's MAC address */

[[Category: Tutorials]]
[[Category: Networking]]
[[Category: Programmer's Guide]]
{| align="right"
| __TOC__
|}
LinuxMCE allows [[media director]]s to be booted over the network. This means that you can boot up thin clients without hard drives, or systems with other operating systems without affecting what is already on the disk.

==How to set it up==
===Enable PXE boot===
This is also known as network boot and can be accessed in your computer's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS BIOS]. The exact procedure varies depending on your PC. Normally you press F2 or DEL right after turning the PC on to enter the BIOS settings. There is then usually an advanced option to enable this.

===Set the correct boot order===
You are also going to want to set the boot order in the BIOS so the network boot comes first, and your hard drive second. However most BIOS's will make you first enable network boot, save your changes, restart the computer, and then enter the BIOS settings a second time to set the boot order.

===Determine your network card's MAC address===

'''This step is not needed since version 7.04'''

<s>When network boot is working you should see at bootup the PC's mac address, and a messages about trying to contact a DHCP server, or trying to find a network boot image. This will be a new message you didn't see before and it means network boot is active on the PC. It will usually try for about 10 seconds to do a network boot image, and then give up and boot off the hard drive. This is what you want. When you see the message that it is trying to do the network boot, write down the mac address.

You can also get the mac address in Windows by running IPCONFIG command prompt, or in Linux by typing ifconfig as root from a console or a terminal.</s>

===Setup the media director in LinuxMCE===

'''This step is no longer needed in 7.10'''

In LinuxMCE Admin go to '''Wizard > Devices > Media Directors'''. Add the media director if this is a new one, and set the mac address. The mac address should be a series of six 2 character sequences separated by colons, like this: 1A:00:F2:21:23:9F

Click 'update' to save your changes, and then click 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'. Wait for the popup window to finish. If this is a new media director you just added, go to Wizard, Restart and click 'Quick Reload Router' so the Router is aware of this new device.

===Boot up from the network===
Now turn on the PC. You should see that it gets an IP address and boots into the media director software. The first time you boot it, it can take up to 30 minutes to boot because it will be installing a lot of the software on the diskless image on the core.

After some time, you will see the avwizard screen where you can choose your UI, resolution and so forth. After finishing the avwizard, the system will setup your interface and eventually you will be prompted by the setup wizard where you should choose the media center setup and then go through your typical setup for this new MD.

==How to use it==
[[Using LinuxMCE]]. If this media director has a hard drive in it that contains another operating system (like Windows or Linux), then from the media director's on-screen orbiter, or from any other orbiter that is currently controlling that media director, hit the 'power' button and choose 'restart as windows/linux' to boot up the computer off the hard drive and use it like a normal PC. Then choose 'restart as LinuxMCE' from the orbiter to boot it back again into LinuxMCE.

==Troubleshooting==
===PXE-Boot hangs up, looping......===

I got an Asus A7N8X-deluxe board, with two NICs onboard, when I connect one of them the md tries to boot via PXE, everything seems to go its way, until, the line: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0 comes up, for about 20 seconds and after this.
After this, the last block written:

IP-Config eth0 complete (from 192.168.1.23)
adr: 192.168.80.255 broadcast: 192.168.80.255 netmask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 192.168.80.1 dns0: 192.168.80.1 dns1: 0.0.0.0
rootserver: 192.168.80.1 rootpath: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0

is repeated about hours in a really fast way.....

====Answer====
It is switching nics on you during the pxe boot. Disabling one of the on-board nics.

:''Source: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3521.0''

==GRUB PXE network boot==
In some situations, it may be more appropriate to use GNU GRUB bootloader:

#The machine does not support PXE booting directly (no boot-ROM).
#You can use a GRUB boot menu to decide wheter you want to boot LMCE or the native OS.
#Booting is a lot faster when you boot the native OS by skipping the network step.
#GRUB allows for easy adjustments of the boot parameters at boot-time.

This is described in detail at [[GRUB PXE network boot]].

== Reduce boot time ==
When using diskless boot, all data have to be read over the network connection. This can cause boot up times longer than desirable. To avoid long boot up times, you can tune the NFS mount options of the NFS root. Specifically, the rsize and wsize options. You might do a Internet search for resources on this.
Another option is to implement suspending of the media director. Also know as standby, suspend or hibernate. This function is not integrated into LinuxMCE (yet), and requires some Linux shell hacking. See the [[Suspend]] article for more information.

==Programmer's guide==
The network boot images are contained in /usr/pluto/diskless/[deviceID]. If a network image is corrupted, just delete that directory, and re-run 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'.

When the user hits the power button to change which device is booted, the command is sent to "General Info Plugin", which updates /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/01-[mac address]. That file contains a line KERNEL or LOCALBOOT 0, depending on what the user wants to boot. If it's LOCALBOOT 0, then when the media director tries to do a network boot the Core will tell it to boot off the hard drive instead. General Info Plugin then sends the App Server running on that machine a command to reboot.

Since there is both a Linux and Windows version of App Server, if App Server is installed and running on the Windows PC, then LinuxMCE can still reboot it remotely back into the network boot even if it's running Windows. Also the Windows App Server utility gives you a tray icon to switch back to network boot.

==Other Network Cards==
If you get to the remote machine starting the boot process, but then fails with it unable to find eth0, the reason may be because the stock diskless image did not have your network card statically compiled. The linux image building process does allow for additional network modules to be loaded during the boot process. The installer that linuxmce uses builds this image from a base copy of the operating system (ubuntu) that is untar'd during the diskless setup process. It puts this into it's own directory that serves as a virtual harddrive for your diskless machine. In the /usr/pluto/diskless directory you should have a list of device numbers that correspond to your diskless machines. For example: '45' was the number for my diskless machine. Edit the file /usr/pluto/diskless/###/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add on your nic's module. In my case I edit /usr/pluto/diskless/45/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and added sky2. Then run the /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh script with the device number (directory name) of your diskless machine. In my case "/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh 45". This script builds the initrd image and puts it in the proper place (symlinks it actually).

The driver used in my machine was the 'sky2' driver for Marvell Gigabit ethernet cards. Other drivers will be located in the /usr/pluto/diskless/xx/lib/modules/2.xxx/kernel/drivers/net/ directory.

Automatic diskless boot of media directors

2008-01-23T22:04:40Z

Rrambo: /* Boot up from the network */

[[Category: Tutorials]]
[[Category: Networking]]
[[Category: Programmer's Guide]]
{| align="right"
| __TOC__
|}
LinuxMCE allows [[media director]]s to be booted over the network. This means that you can boot up thin clients without hard drives, or systems with other operating systems without affecting what is already on the disk.

==How to set it up==
===Enable PXE boot===
This is also known as network boot and can be accessed in your computer's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS BIOS]. The exact procedure varies depending on your PC. Normally you press F2 or DEL right after turning the PC on to enter the BIOS settings. There is then usually an advanced option to enable this.

===Set the correct boot order===
You are also going to want to set the boot order in the BIOS so the network boot comes first, and your hard drive second. However most BIOS's will make you first enable network boot, save your changes, restart the computer, and then enter the BIOS settings a second time to set the boot order.

===Determine your network card's MAC address===

'''This step is no longer needed in 7.10'''

When network boot is working you should see at bootup the PC's mac address, and a messages about trying to contact a DHCP server, or trying to find a network boot image. This will be a new message you didn't see before and it means network boot is active on the PC. It will usually try for about 10 seconds to do a network boot image, and then give up and boot off the hard drive. This is what you want. When you see the message that it is trying to do the network boot, write down the mac address.

You can also get the mac address in Windows by running IPCONFIG command prompt, or in Linux by typing ifconfig as root from a console or a terminal.

===Setup the media director in LinuxMCE===

'''This step is no longer needed in 7.10'''

In LinuxMCE Admin go to '''Wizard > Devices > Media Directors'''. Add the media director if this is a new one, and set the mac address. The mac address should be a series of six 2 character sequences separated by colons, like this: 1A:00:F2:21:23:9F

Click 'update' to save your changes, and then click 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'. Wait for the popup window to finish. If this is a new media director you just added, go to Wizard, Restart and click 'Quick Reload Router' so the Router is aware of this new device.

===Boot up from the network===
Now turn on the PC. You should see that it gets an IP address and boots into the media director software. The first time you boot it, it can take up to 30 minutes to boot because it will be installing a lot of the software on the diskless image on the core.

After some time, you will see the avwizard screen where you can choose your UI, resolution and so forth. After finishing the avwizard, the system will setup your interface and eventually you will be prompted by the setup wizard where you should choose the media center setup and then go through your typical setup for this new MD.

==How to use it==
[[Using LinuxMCE]]. If this media director has a hard drive in it that contains another operating system (like Windows or Linux), then from the media director's on-screen orbiter, or from any other orbiter that is currently controlling that media director, hit the 'power' button and choose 'restart as windows/linux' to boot up the computer off the hard drive and use it like a normal PC. Then choose 'restart as LinuxMCE' from the orbiter to boot it back again into LinuxMCE.

==Troubleshooting==
===PXE-Boot hangs up, looping......===

I got an Asus A7N8X-deluxe board, with two NICs onboard, when I connect one of them the md tries to boot via PXE, everything seems to go its way, until, the line: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0 comes up, for about 20 seconds and after this.
After this, the last block written:

IP-Config eth0 complete (from 192.168.1.23)
adr: 192.168.80.255 broadcast: 192.168.80.255 netmask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 192.168.80.1 dns0: 192.168.80.1 dns1: 0.0.0.0
rootserver: 192.168.80.1 rootpath: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0

is repeated about hours in a really fast way.....

====Answer====
It is switching nics on you during the pxe boot. Disabling one of the on-board nics.

:''Source: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3521.0''

==GRUB PXE network boot==
In some situations, it may be more appropriate to use GNU GRUB bootloader:

#The machine does not support PXE booting directly (no boot-ROM).
#You can use a GRUB boot menu to decide wheter you want to boot LMCE or the native OS.
#Booting is a lot faster when you boot the native OS by skipping the network step.
#GRUB allows for easy adjustments of the boot parameters at boot-time.

This is described in detail at [[GRUB PXE network boot]].

== Reduce boot time ==
When using diskless boot, all data have to be read over the network connection. This can cause boot up times longer than desirable. To avoid long boot up times, you can tune the NFS mount options of the NFS root. Specifically, the rsize and wsize options. You might do a Internet search for resources on this.
Another option is to implement suspending of the media director. Also know as standby, suspend or hibernate. This function is not integrated into LinuxMCE (yet), and requires some Linux shell hacking. See the [[Suspend]] article for more information.

==Programmer's guide==
The network boot images are contained in /usr/pluto/diskless/[deviceID]. If a network image is corrupted, just delete that directory, and re-run 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'.

When the user hits the power button to change which device is booted, the command is sent to "General Info Plugin", which updates /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/01-[mac address]. That file contains a line KERNEL or LOCALBOOT 0, depending on what the user wants to boot. If it's LOCALBOOT 0, then when the media director tries to do a network boot the Core will tell it to boot off the hard drive instead. General Info Plugin then sends the App Server running on that machine a command to reboot.

Since there is both a Linux and Windows version of App Server, if App Server is installed and running on the Windows PC, then LinuxMCE can still reboot it remotely back into the network boot even if it's running Windows. Also the Windows App Server utility gives you a tray icon to switch back to network boot.

==Other Network Cards==
If you get to the remote machine starting the boot process, but then fails with it unable to find eth0, the reason may be because the stock diskless image did not have your network card statically compiled. The linux image building process does allow for additional network modules to be loaded during the boot process. The installer that linuxmce uses builds this image from a base copy of the operating system (ubuntu) that is untar'd during the diskless setup process. It puts this into it's own directory that serves as a virtual harddrive for your diskless machine. In the /usr/pluto/diskless directory you should have a list of device numbers that correspond to your diskless machines. For example: '45' was the number for my diskless machine. Edit the file /usr/pluto/diskless/###/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add on your nic's module. In my case I edit /usr/pluto/diskless/45/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and added sky2. Then run the /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh script with the device number (directory name) of your diskless machine. In my case "/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh 45". This script builds the initrd image and puts it in the proper place (symlinks it actually).

The driver used in my machine was the 'sky2' driver for Marvell Gigabit ethernet cards. Other drivers will be located in the /usr/pluto/diskless/xx/lib/modules/2.xxx/kernel/drivers/net/ directory.

Automatic diskless boot of media directors

2008-01-23T21:59:18Z

Rrambo: /* Setup the media director in LinuxMCE */

[[Category: Tutorials]]
[[Category: Networking]]
[[Category: Programmer's Guide]]
{| align="right"
| __TOC__
|}
LinuxMCE allows [[media director]]s to be booted over the network. This means that you can boot up thin clients without hard drives, or systems with other operating systems without affecting what is already on the disk.

==How to set it up==
===Enable PXE boot===
This is also known as network boot and can be accessed in your computer's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS BIOS]. The exact procedure varies depending on your PC. Normally you press F2 or DEL right after turning the PC on to enter the BIOS settings. There is then usually an advanced option to enable this.

===Set the correct boot order===
You are also going to want to set the boot order in the BIOS so the network boot comes first, and your hard drive second. However most BIOS's will make you first enable network boot, save your changes, restart the computer, and then enter the BIOS settings a second time to set the boot order.

===Determine your network card's MAC address===

'''This step is no longer needed in 7.10'''

When network boot is working you should see at bootup the PC's mac address, and a messages about trying to contact a DHCP server, or trying to find a network boot image. This will be a new message you didn't see before and it means network boot is active on the PC. It will usually try for about 10 seconds to do a network boot image, and then give up and boot off the hard drive. This is what you want. When you see the message that it is trying to do the network boot, write down the mac address.

You can also get the mac address in Windows by running IPCONFIG command prompt, or in Linux by typing ifconfig as root from a console or a terminal.

===Setup the media director in LinuxMCE===

'''This step is no longer needed in 7.10'''

In LinuxMCE Admin go to '''Wizard > Devices > Media Directors'''. Add the media director if this is a new one, and set the mac address. The mac address should be a series of six 2 character sequences separated by colons, like this: 1A:00:F2:21:23:9F

Click 'update' to save your changes, and then click 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'. Wait for the popup window to finish. If this is a new media director you just added, go to Wizard, Restart and click 'Quick Reload Router' so the Router is aware of this new device.

===Boot up from the network===
Now turn on the PC. You should see that it gets an IP address and boots into the media director software. The first time you boot it, it can take up to 30 minutes to boot because it will be installing a lot of the software on the diskless image on the core, and it will also need to generate a user interface.

Once it's up, use the '''Wizard > Devices > Media Directors''' page to set the display resolution and also choose extra software you want to run on that Media Director with the 'Edit Computing Applications' button.

==How to use it==
[[Using LinuxMCE]]. If this media director has a hard drive in it that contains another operating system (like Windows or Linux), then from the media director's on-screen orbiter, or from any other orbiter that is currently controlling that media director, hit the 'power' button and choose 'restart as windows/linux' to boot up the computer off the hard drive and use it like a normal PC. Then choose 'restart as LinuxMCE' from the orbiter to boot it back again into LinuxMCE.

==Troubleshooting==
===PXE-Boot hangs up, looping......===

I got an Asus A7N8X-deluxe board, with two NICs onboard, when I connect one of them the md tries to boot via PXE, everything seems to go its way, until, the line: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0 comes up, for about 20 seconds and after this.
After this, the last block written:

IP-Config eth0 complete (from 192.168.1.23)
adr: 192.168.80.255 broadcast: 192.168.80.255 netmask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 192.168.80.1 dns0: 192.168.80.1 dns1: 0.0.0.0
rootserver: 192.168.80.1 rootpath: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0

is repeated about hours in a really fast way.....

====Answer====
It is switching nics on you during the pxe boot. Disabling one of the on-board nics.

:''Source: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3521.0''

==GRUB PXE network boot==
In some situations, it may be more appropriate to use GNU GRUB bootloader:

#The machine does not support PXE booting directly (no boot-ROM).
#You can use a GRUB boot menu to decide wheter you want to boot LMCE or the native OS.
#Booting is a lot faster when you boot the native OS by skipping the network step.
#GRUB allows for easy adjustments of the boot parameters at boot-time.

This is described in detail at [[GRUB PXE network boot]].

== Reduce boot time ==
When using diskless boot, all data have to be read over the network connection. This can cause boot up times longer than desirable. To avoid long boot up times, you can tune the NFS mount options of the NFS root. Specifically, the rsize and wsize options. You might do a Internet search for resources on this.
Another option is to implement suspending of the media director. Also know as standby, suspend or hibernate. This function is not integrated into LinuxMCE (yet), and requires some Linux shell hacking. See the [[Suspend]] article for more information.

==Programmer's guide==
The network boot images are contained in /usr/pluto/diskless/[deviceID]. If a network image is corrupted, just delete that directory, and re-run 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'.

When the user hits the power button to change which device is booted, the command is sent to "General Info Plugin", which updates /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/01-[mac address]. That file contains a line KERNEL or LOCALBOOT 0, depending on what the user wants to boot. If it's LOCALBOOT 0, then when the media director tries to do a network boot the Core will tell it to boot off the hard drive instead. General Info Plugin then sends the App Server running on that machine a command to reboot.

Since there is both a Linux and Windows version of App Server, if App Server is installed and running on the Windows PC, then LinuxMCE can still reboot it remotely back into the network boot even if it's running Windows. Also the Windows App Server utility gives you a tray icon to switch back to network boot.

==Other Network Cards==
If you get to the remote machine starting the boot process, but then fails with it unable to find eth0, the reason may be because the stock diskless image did not have your network card statically compiled. The linux image building process does allow for additional network modules to be loaded during the boot process. The installer that linuxmce uses builds this image from a base copy of the operating system (ubuntu) that is untar'd during the diskless setup process. It puts this into it's own directory that serves as a virtual harddrive for your diskless machine. In the /usr/pluto/diskless directory you should have a list of device numbers that correspond to your diskless machines. For example: '45' was the number for my diskless machine. Edit the file /usr/pluto/diskless/###/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add on your nic's module. In my case I edit /usr/pluto/diskless/45/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and added sky2. Then run the /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh script with the device number (directory name) of your diskless machine. In my case "/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh 45". This script builds the initrd image and puts it in the proper place (symlinks it actually).

The driver used in my machine was the 'sky2' driver for Marvell Gigabit ethernet cards. Other drivers will be located in the /usr/pluto/diskless/xx/lib/modules/2.xxx/kernel/drivers/net/ directory.

Automatic diskless boot of media directors

2008-01-23T21:58:15Z

Rrambo: /* Determine your network card's MAC address */

[[Category: Tutorials]]
[[Category: Networking]]
[[Category: Programmer's Guide]]
{| align="right"
| __TOC__
|}
LinuxMCE allows [[media director]]s to be booted over the network. This means that you can boot up thin clients without hard drives, or systems with other operating systems without affecting what is already on the disk.

==How to set it up==
===Enable PXE boot===
This is also known as network boot and can be accessed in your computer's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS BIOS]. The exact procedure varies depending on your PC. Normally you press F2 or DEL right after turning the PC on to enter the BIOS settings. There is then usually an advanced option to enable this.

===Set the correct boot order===
You are also going to want to set the boot order in the BIOS so the network boot comes first, and your hard drive second. However most BIOS's will make you first enable network boot, save your changes, restart the computer, and then enter the BIOS settings a second time to set the boot order.

===Determine your network card's MAC address===

'''This step is no longer needed in 7.10'''

When network boot is working you should see at bootup the PC's mac address, and a messages about trying to contact a DHCP server, or trying to find a network boot image. This will be a new message you didn't see before and it means network boot is active on the PC. It will usually try for about 10 seconds to do a network boot image, and then give up and boot off the hard drive. This is what you want. When you see the message that it is trying to do the network boot, write down the mac address.

You can also get the mac address in Windows by running IPCONFIG command prompt, or in Linux by typing ifconfig as root from a console or a terminal.

===Setup the media director in LinuxMCE===
In LinuxMCE Admin go to '''Wizard > Devices > Media Directors'''. Add the media director if this is a new one, and set the mac address. The mac address should be a series of six 2 character sequences separated by colons, like this: 1A:00:F2:21:23:9F

Click 'update' to save your changes, and then click 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'. Wait for the popup window to finish. If this is a new media director you just added, go to Wizard, Restart and click 'Quick Reload Router' so the Router is aware of this new device.

===Boot up from the network===
Now turn on the PC. You should see that it gets an IP address and boots into the media director software. The first time you boot it, it can take up to 30 minutes to boot because it will be installing a lot of the software on the diskless image on the core, and it will also need to generate a user interface.

Once it's up, use the '''Wizard > Devices > Media Directors''' page to set the display resolution and also choose extra software you want to run on that Media Director with the 'Edit Computing Applications' button.

==How to use it==
[[Using LinuxMCE]]. If this media director has a hard drive in it that contains another operating system (like Windows or Linux), then from the media director's on-screen orbiter, or from any other orbiter that is currently controlling that media director, hit the 'power' button and choose 'restart as windows/linux' to boot up the computer off the hard drive and use it like a normal PC. Then choose 'restart as LinuxMCE' from the orbiter to boot it back again into LinuxMCE.

==Troubleshooting==
===PXE-Boot hangs up, looping......===

I got an Asus A7N8X-deluxe board, with two NICs onboard, when I connect one of them the md tries to boot via PXE, everything seems to go its way, until, the line: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0 comes up, for about 20 seconds and after this.
After this, the last block written:

IP-Config eth0 complete (from 192.168.1.23)
adr: 192.168.80.255 broadcast: 192.168.80.255 netmask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 192.168.80.1 dns0: 192.168.80.1 dns1: 0.0.0.0
rootserver: 192.168.80.1 rootpath: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0

is repeated about hours in a really fast way.....

====Answer====
It is switching nics on you during the pxe boot. Disabling one of the on-board nics.

:''Source: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3521.0''

==GRUB PXE network boot==
In some situations, it may be more appropriate to use GNU GRUB bootloader:

#The machine does not support PXE booting directly (no boot-ROM).
#You can use a GRUB boot menu to decide wheter you want to boot LMCE or the native OS.
#Booting is a lot faster when you boot the native OS by skipping the network step.
#GRUB allows for easy adjustments of the boot parameters at boot-time.

This is described in detail at [[GRUB PXE network boot]].

== Reduce boot time ==
When using diskless boot, all data have to be read over the network connection. This can cause boot up times longer than desirable. To avoid long boot up times, you can tune the NFS mount options of the NFS root. Specifically, the rsize and wsize options. You might do a Internet search for resources on this.
Another option is to implement suspending of the media director. Also know as standby, suspend or hibernate. This function is not integrated into LinuxMCE (yet), and requires some Linux shell hacking. See the [[Suspend]] article for more information.

==Programmer's guide==
The network boot images are contained in /usr/pluto/diskless/[deviceID]. If a network image is corrupted, just delete that directory, and re-run 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'.

When the user hits the power button to change which device is booted, the command is sent to "General Info Plugin", which updates /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/01-[mac address]. That file contains a line KERNEL or LOCALBOOT 0, depending on what the user wants to boot. If it's LOCALBOOT 0, then when the media director tries to do a network boot the Core will tell it to boot off the hard drive instead. General Info Plugin then sends the App Server running on that machine a command to reboot.

Since there is both a Linux and Windows version of App Server, if App Server is installed and running on the Windows PC, then LinuxMCE can still reboot it remotely back into the network boot even if it's running Windows. Also the Windows App Server utility gives you a tray icon to switch back to network boot.

==Other Network Cards==
If you get to the remote machine starting the boot process, but then fails with it unable to find eth0, the reason may be because the stock diskless image did not have your network card statically compiled. The linux image building process does allow for additional network modules to be loaded during the boot process. The installer that linuxmce uses builds this image from a base copy of the operating system (ubuntu) that is untar'd during the diskless setup process. It puts this into it's own directory that serves as a virtual harddrive for your diskless machine. In the /usr/pluto/diskless directory you should have a list of device numbers that correspond to your diskless machines. For example: '45' was the number for my diskless machine. Edit the file /usr/pluto/diskless/###/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add on your nic's module. In my case I edit /usr/pluto/diskless/45/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and added sky2. Then run the /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh script with the device number (directory name) of your diskless machine. In my case "/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh 45". This script builds the initrd image and puts it in the proper place (symlinks it actually).

The driver used in my machine was the 'sky2' driver for Marvell Gigabit ethernet cards. Other drivers will be located in the /usr/pluto/diskless/xx/lib/modules/2.xxx/kernel/drivers/net/ directory.

Automatic diskless boot of media directors

2008-01-23T21:57:03Z

Rrambo: /* Determine your network card's MAC address */

[[Category: Tutorials]]
[[Category: Networking]]
[[Category: Programmer's Guide]]
{| align="right"
| __TOC__
|}
LinuxMCE allows [[media director]]s to be booted over the network. This means that you can boot up thin clients without hard drives, or systems with other operating systems without affecting what is already on the disk.

==How to set it up==
===Enable PXE boot===
This is also known as network boot and can be accessed in your computer's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS BIOS]. The exact procedure varies depending on your PC. Normally you press F2 or DEL right after turning the PC on to enter the BIOS settings. There is then usually an advanced option to enable this.

===Set the correct boot order===
You are also going to want to set the boot order in the BIOS so the network boot comes first, and your hard drive second. However most BIOS's will make you first enable network boot, save your changes, restart the computer, and then enter the BIOS settings a second time to set the boot order.

===Determine your network card's MAC address===
When network boot is working you should see at bootup the PC's mac address, and a messages about trying to contact a DHCP server, or trying to find a network boot image. This will be a new message you didn't see before and it means network boot is active on the PC. It will usually try for about 10 seconds to do a network boot image, and then give up and boot off the hard drive. This is what you want. When you see the message that it is trying to do the network boot, write down the mac address.

You can also get the mac address in Windows by running IPCONFIG command prompt, or in Linux by typing ifconfig as root from a console or a terminal.

'''This step is no longer needed in 7.10'''

===Setup the media director in LinuxMCE===
In LinuxMCE Admin go to '''Wizard > Devices > Media Directors'''. Add the media director if this is a new one, and set the mac address. The mac address should be a series of six 2 character sequences separated by colons, like this: 1A:00:F2:21:23:9F

Click 'update' to save your changes, and then click 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'. Wait for the popup window to finish. If this is a new media director you just added, go to Wizard, Restart and click 'Quick Reload Router' so the Router is aware of this new device.

===Boot up from the network===
Now turn on the PC. You should see that it gets an IP address and boots into the media director software. The first time you boot it, it can take up to 30 minutes to boot because it will be installing a lot of the software on the diskless image on the core, and it will also need to generate a user interface.

Once it's up, use the '''Wizard > Devices > Media Directors''' page to set the display resolution and also choose extra software you want to run on that Media Director with the 'Edit Computing Applications' button.

==How to use it==
[[Using LinuxMCE]]. If this media director has a hard drive in it that contains another operating system (like Windows or Linux), then from the media director's on-screen orbiter, or from any other orbiter that is currently controlling that media director, hit the 'power' button and choose 'restart as windows/linux' to boot up the computer off the hard drive and use it like a normal PC. Then choose 'restart as LinuxMCE' from the orbiter to boot it back again into LinuxMCE.

==Troubleshooting==
===PXE-Boot hangs up, looping......===

I got an Asus A7N8X-deluxe board, with two NICs onboard, when I connect one of them the md tries to boot via PXE, everything seems to go its way, until, the line: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0 comes up, for about 20 seconds and after this.
After this, the last block written:

IP-Config eth0 complete (from 192.168.1.23)
adr: 192.168.80.255 broadcast: 192.168.80.255 netmask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 192.168.80.1 dns0: 192.168.80.1 dns1: 0.0.0.0
rootserver: 192.168.80.1 rootpath: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0

is repeated about hours in a really fast way.....

====Answer====
It is switching nics on you during the pxe boot. Disabling one of the on-board nics.

:''Source: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3521.0''

==GRUB PXE network boot==
In some situations, it may be more appropriate to use GNU GRUB bootloader:

#The machine does not support PXE booting directly (no boot-ROM).
#You can use a GRUB boot menu to decide wheter you want to boot LMCE or the native OS.
#Booting is a lot faster when you boot the native OS by skipping the network step.
#GRUB allows for easy adjustments of the boot parameters at boot-time.

This is described in detail at [[GRUB PXE network boot]].

== Reduce boot time ==
When using diskless boot, all data have to be read over the network connection. This can cause boot up times longer than desirable. To avoid long boot up times, you can tune the NFS mount options of the NFS root. Specifically, the rsize and wsize options. You might do a Internet search for resources on this.
Another option is to implement suspending of the media director. Also know as standby, suspend or hibernate. This function is not integrated into LinuxMCE (yet), and requires some Linux shell hacking. See the [[Suspend]] article for more information.

==Programmer's guide==
The network boot images are contained in /usr/pluto/diskless/[deviceID]. If a network image is corrupted, just delete that directory, and re-run 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'.

When the user hits the power button to change which device is booted, the command is sent to "General Info Plugin", which updates /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/01-[mac address]. That file contains a line KERNEL or LOCALBOOT 0, depending on what the user wants to boot. If it's LOCALBOOT 0, then when the media director tries to do a network boot the Core will tell it to boot off the hard drive instead. General Info Plugin then sends the App Server running on that machine a command to reboot.

Since there is both a Linux and Windows version of App Server, if App Server is installed and running on the Windows PC, then LinuxMCE can still reboot it remotely back into the network boot even if it's running Windows. Also the Windows App Server utility gives you a tray icon to switch back to network boot.

==Other Network Cards==
If you get to the remote machine starting the boot process, but then fails with it unable to find eth0, the reason may be because the stock diskless image did not have your network card statically compiled. The linux image building process does allow for additional network modules to be loaded during the boot process. The installer that linuxmce uses builds this image from a base copy of the operating system (ubuntu) that is untar'd during the diskless setup process. It puts this into it's own directory that serves as a virtual harddrive for your diskless machine. In the /usr/pluto/diskless directory you should have a list of device numbers that correspond to your diskless machines. For example: '45' was the number for my diskless machine. Edit the file /usr/pluto/diskless/###/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add on your nic's module. In my case I edit /usr/pluto/diskless/45/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and added sky2. Then run the /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh script with the device number (directory name) of your diskless machine. In my case "/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh 45". This script builds the initrd image and puts it in the proper place (symlinks it actually).

The driver used in my machine was the 'sky2' driver for Marvell Gigabit ethernet cards. Other drivers will be located in the /usr/pluto/diskless/xx/lib/modules/2.xxx/kernel/drivers/net/ directory.