- This topic has 8 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated Jun 12-12:59 pm by patpat.
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patpat
antiX 19.2 PXE boot, see here:
https://www.vercot.com/~serva/an/NonWindowsPXE3.htmlIt would be great adding native PXE support to antiX boot ISO
Brian Masinick
The examples of the other systems that support this are 3-4 years old.
Are there any new or recent examples of this? Otherwise I am wondering what purpose this serves?
antiX is able to boot with modern file systems. Please help me understand what objective you have in using this method with your system.
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Brian MasinickPlease take a look at PXE boot/install (network boot/install):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_EnvironmentPXE has been around for long time now.
Today a good Linux distro produces ISOs that can be easily network booted/installed without adding extra stuff.
RHEL/SUSE/UBUNTU/Debian/ etc…With network/boot install you put the distro ISO content on a PXE Server and
a network connected PC booting in network mode can boot/install any OS from the PXE server
w/o needing any physical media present at the booting PC, everything comes trough the Ethernet cable.I see 1/2/3 GB distros deciding to remove network support from their initrd in order to save ~20MB;
meager saving and they become not PXE bootable.The website I quoted before includes PXE support for current and old versions of famous distros.
Unfortunately antiX (and MX) needs extra stuff to be PXE booted. It would be really nice
if antiX natively embrace PXE in future versions.Let me know if I was not clear at some point.
Xecure
Today a good Linux distro produces ISOs that can be easily network booted/installed without adding extra stuff.
RHEL/SUSE/UBUNTU/Debian/ etc…I understand what you mean, but you cannot compare a one-man project to a company with many workers or even one with hundreds of thousands in donations.
The website I quoted before includes PXE support for current and old versions of famous distros.
Unfortunately antiX (and MX) needs extra stuff to be PXE booted. It would be really nice
if antiX natively embrace PXE in future versions.Does this work with 32bits? If this is added to all ISO versions, could it break something? Will they still work with any computer? Can this be disabled/uninstalled if someone doesn’t want it/wants to save space? Doe the developer have to upgrade/fix this packages in the future adding more extra work for building each version/edition?
You seem to know what this is and how it works, but most of us are a bit “illiterate” about this technology. Answering these questions and explaining how to do all this could help a lot in deciding if this is cost (as in time) effective and if it is worth it for the main developer. After all, it is nice to ask for someone to do stuff, but it is their time that will be used for getting this done.
Maybe, having someone in the MX Team (more people there) be interested in this and do this part, and antiX including their work, could also be a possibility.
antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.Being PXE compliant is more of a philosophy than a “real” effort; many times it only requires to create the booting initrd
including network support and some minimal related bash scripting.PXE support works for both 32 and 64bit versions, off course that implies different initrds.
PXE support does not break things; in a regular boot the booting initrd looks for the linuxfs image on a CD/DVD drive,
on a PXE boot it will wget the linuxfs image from the PXE server (or sometimes using cifs or nfs);
In order to use wget we need the network services up and a DHCP client IP request. That’s it.
The difference between both booting methods is defined by the variables passed to the kernel at boot.About effort; you guys do not have to do much; Serva already did the hard work.
Your distro boots
/antiX/initrd.gz (but it has no Network support)then Serva loads 3 consecutive initrds to achieve PXE support:
antiX/initrd.img-4.9.212-antix.1-amd64-smp,antiX/initrd.gz,antiX/INITRD_N29.1.GZinitrd.img-4.9.212-antix.1-amd64-smp is the one included in the linuxfs image and provides Network support (drivers/protocols/etc)
initrd.gz is the one that includes the main init script able to boot the linuxfs image from a CD
INITRD_N29.1.GZ is Serva’s created initrd providing a patched init script and certain “breakpoint” scripts used to deal with dhcp/wget/etcif you guys provide an initrd.gz with network support just open INITRD_N29.1.GZ and see the scripting.
NOTE: INITRD_N29.1.GZ also includes some code dealing with the fact that the previous 2 initrds have different structure;
while one uses /lib /bin /sbin the other one uses /usr/lib /usr/bin /usr/sbin, this requires an additional cp thas is not
necessary when making this a single intrd solution.any doubt let me know.
Brian Masinick
OK, I get it now. In fact, I used to work as a Systems Administrator, working 80-90% with UNIX servers coupled to workstations with small, if any, local disk storage, and we typically used bootp to both install and boot these workstations (BOOTP/DHCP/TFTP were used to boot small workstations with minimal disk storage available at the time that PXE was common). There was definitely moderate to medium network overhead. The gain was greater simplicity of system management. When the server received new software, it could effectively get to the workstations booted by the server getting the updates. Typically we’d have at least two servers per Internet subnet servicing boot requests and server boot disks. If I remember correctly, we would typically have a “favored” server to boot each workstation along with a back-up server, though either could technically take any service request.
With antiX we don’t currently have a client-server storage model built-in, though several of the network protocols are available.
One reason we have not offered such a service is that it has not been a primary design decision in the past. What antiX does really well is to contain the size and resource consumption of resources. Even there, with the growing size and capability of Web browsing technology, the browser component, far and away consumes the most resources.
I could see a potential scenario in which some people may want PXE for a configuration where “family member” MX Linux may choose to consider adding PXE support. I suppose with enough demand that could be a service that’s added to antiX, but that is not for me to decide one way or the other. My opinion, however, is to leave the server side capabilities to the larger, full featured distributions and keep small ones like antiX “lean and mean” as they have been since their formation. Otherwise the characteristics that once put antiX in a class by itself could be eroded or even lost, and my 2 cents is that if I had such a requirement, I’d use another distribution for those systems and use antiX/MX for my oldest systems that need lean capabilities to be able to boot, load, and run reasonably without choking on their workload or failing to function properly. Again, just my opinion, but I’m guessing that it is an opinion that most current users and the team share, otherwise PXE would be present already in our project.
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Brian MasinickantiX ISO is 711MB and you do not want to add PXE support because the image would be then 731 MB? OK…
Brian Masinick
antiX ISO is 711MB and you do not want to add PXE support because the image would be then 731 MB? OK…
Perhaps the only reason we do not have this capability is because you are the first one to ask for it.
As mentioned, I’m not the decision maker; perhaps it can be added. If so, could you be counted on to test it effectively for the team?- This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Brian Masinick.
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Brian MasinickPXE is a way to reach to people that would never look after/download a particular XYZ distro.
Suddenly XYZ becomes a new entry available on the PXE server menu and with just an [ENTER]
lot of users can try XYZ features and see if they like it or not.If you guys decide to add PXE support sure you can count on me for testing or anything PXE related.
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