Latest revision as of 17:09, 8 October 2012

NOTE: Disked MDs are unsupported in 710 and 810. If you pursue these instructions, keep your questions/comments here and don't ask the devs for help. They're plenty busy working to get the other parts ready.

In the ideal situation, each MD should be diskless and boot over the network. This simplifies matters for configuration, upgrading, etc. Not to mention it's the supported method. There is one case in particular where this is not feasible. Namely when you want an MD in a room where you cannot run a cable and must connect wirelessly.

Bear in mind that this setup is

• slower
• error prone
• not upgraded automatically
• not supported

I created this setup using a 810 Alpha2 installation. It's likely very similar for 710, but that's not tested.

Overview

The way we set this up is to install a full-blown hybrid on the MD, disable the core services to trim it down to MD-only, then manually make the connections between the true core and the new MD. The final step configures wireless to connect on boot. If you're not connecting wirelessly, there's no point in doing this disked setup.

Setup

Follow LinuxMCE-0810_alpha2 to install a hybrid on the new MD.

Edit /etc/inittab and make sure the only uncommented line (no '#' at the beginning) is id:5 We'll be using runlevel 5 for our setup.

Go to /etc/rc5.d and delete the following files (if they exist):

• S17mysql-ndb-mgm
• S18mysql-ndb
• S19autofs
• S19mysql
• S20nfs-common
• S20nfs-kernel-server
• S21asterisk
• S28NetworkManager (we'll be configuring the wireless manually)
• S99core
• S99kdm
• S99launch-manager

Edit /etc/init.d/launch-manager to contain the following:

#!/bin/bash
        if  "$1" == start ; then
                rm /usr/pluto/locks/pluto_spawned_local_devices.txt
                /usr/pluto/bin/Start_X.sh
                sleep 5
                /usr/pluto/bin/lmce_launch_manager.sh &
        fi

And create a link

sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/launch-manager /etc/rc5.d/S99zlaunch-manager

Now we create an MD on the core. Using the webadmin, add a new MD. Give it the MAC address of the wireless card (use ifconfig to find it). Note what device number it was assigned.

Edit the file /etc/pluto.conf on the disked MD and change the following lines:

DCERouter = <your core machine here>
MySqlHost = <your core machine here>
PK_Device = <the device number assigned to the MD you created on the web admin>
AutostartCore = 0
AutostartMedia = 1

Edit the file /etc/fstab on the disked MD and add the following lines:

<core machine>:/usr/pluto/orbiter /usr/pluto/orbiter nfs intr,udp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,retrans=10,timeo=50 1 1
<core machine>:/home /home nfs intr,udp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,retrans=10,timeo=50 1 1
<core machine>:/mnt/device/79 /mnt/device/79 nfs intr,udp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,retrans=10,timeo=50 1 1

The last line is if your core machine mounts some media at /mnt/device/## in the case above it's a RAID array containing my media, so I need access to it on the MD. You can find out if you need this by running

ls -l /home/public/data/videos

on the core (or MD after you've mounted /home) and check for a link to /mnt/device/##

Now we configure the wireless. Use ifconfig to find the interface name for your wireless card (common ones are eth1, wlan0, ra0). Edit /etc/network/interfaces and add the following:

auto <wireless interface>
iface <wireless interface> inet dhcp
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Finally we'll create the /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file

network={
  ssid="<Your access point ssid>"
  psk="<Your encryption key>"
}

Reboot and cross your fingers!

Problems?

It's quite possible I forgot something. Post here and we'll try to sort it out.