kernel environment between reboots, diskless

[Brooks Davis]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 01:16:01PM -0800, Steve Watt wrote:
> On Jan 14, 13:11, Brooks Davis wrote:
> } On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 12:55:49PM -0800, Steve Watt wrote:
> } > I'm working on a dataless system that will be booting and rooting
> } > from flash for some environmental chamber (thermal) tests, and
> } > logging the results to an NFS server outside the chamber.
> } 
> } I've got to ask, if you're in an NFS environment, why boot from flash at
> } all?  Why not PXE boot or use etherboot?
> 
> I'm attempting to minimize reboot cycle time, since part of the test
> suite involves 50 reboots per card, and with 5 cards in the system,
> a minute extra boot time is suddenly four hours.

Hmm, that might be an issue.  If your network is reliable (and you
configure your switches so you don't get screwed by spanning tree), PXE
boots are quite fast, probably not more then a few seconds longer then
booting from local media (possiably less since you could disabling BIOS
probing of the media which takes forever.)

> But I'll admit to not having gathered the data on that one, so I'll
> give it a closer look.  If I PXE or etherboot, how would the kernel
> environment get populated then?

From the server.  The advantage of this is that it would be easy to
script changes on the server as opposed to changes on the flash card.
You also don't need to worry about wearing out the server's disks.

-- Brooks

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