lesslinux.org Development Blog

After adding support for netbooting LessLinux by downloading the ISO image via HTTP/FTP I can announce support for NFS boot. For this feature you just need to add

        nfs=192.168.1.1:/dir/containing/iso

In this case, the NFS share is mounted read only (and no locking takes place), then all ISO files down to depth 2 are searched, loop back mounted and scanned for the proper version.txt. If the system is found, the settings for toram=value take place. In reasonable fast networks you should keep this threshold low, then the start of a program via network is quick, on networks with bad latencies you might set a low threshold to copy the entire system to RAM during startup.

You might download the ISO and the sources here:

• lesslinux-search-and-rescue-uluru-20100726-105414.iso
• lesslinux-search-and-rescue-uluru-20100726-105414-buildscripts.tar.bz2

To build yourself follow the instructions in those two articles: Build stage 01 and 02 and Build stage03.

As mentioned previously, support for netbooting LessLinux was recently introduced. In builds from 20100528-000000 it works stable and can be used in production environments. So please test the new function with this build:

• lesslinux-search-and-rescue-uluru-20100528-114807.iso

Currently for netbooting a DHCP and PXE server are required, a HTTP daemon should be present, although it is possible to load the ISO directly from download.lesslinux.org. For now the ISO is completely stored in volatile memory — future versions will probably also allow NFS access. To load an ISO via HTTP just one additional parameter is necessary: (more…)

As I mentioned before, “LessLinux Search and Rescue” is intended to be a versatile live system for typical service jobs that have to be done in mixed environments. To make work easier, a service system should be net-bootable and accessible with a remote desktop application. In builds starting with timestamps after 20100526-000000 I included support for both functions:

• Booting the kernel and initramfs with PXE and loading the system ISO with wget by http or ftp
• Starting the desktop with Xvnc instead a local X server

(more…)