SV: [syslinux] Boot from Linux

[Henrik Lassen]

Dear Mr. H

It is an honer to recieve a mail from you (I will put a paper copy on the billboard for a week or two).

              THANKS FOR YOUR PRODUCT!

I am building a Beowulf Cluster for Meteorological Simulations (DK government) and must boot the buggers over and over again.

At present boot and configure nodes in 3:40 min. (expect to do so with 100+ nodes - that is quick).

1.	/sbin/reboot -f
2.	Booting using BOOTP in parrallel with IT department DHCP (MS pjuk)
05 sec BIOS
10 sec PXE
16 sec DHCP
22 sec pxelinux.0
25 sec vmlinuz/initrd
3.	pxelinux.0
4.	Redhat kickstart (from hidden harddisk partition)
5.	Reboot and service setup

Wish list:

1.	I would like pxelinux.0 (or equivalent) to reinitialize the host on the fly.
2.	Alternative ks file locations: ks1, ks2, ks3 - this would allow for fault tolerence
3.	Read ks from ftp or tftp - I mean we already get pxelinux.0 from tftp.


NB!  At present excess time spent:

1.	Rebooting
2.	Installing things I do not really need (due to RPM/Kickstart dependencies).

Hvis a nice day
Henrik
 
-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: H. Peter Anvin [ mailto:hpa at zytor.com]
Sendt: 23. oktober 2002 19:57
Til: Josef Siemes
Cc: Henrik Lassen; syslinux at zytor.com
Emne: Re: [syslinux] Boot from Linux


Josef Siemes wrote:
> Hi,
>
> "Henrik Lassen" <HEL at fomfrv.dk> schrieb am 23.10.02 13:17:18:
>
>>      Do you know how to boot from Linux???
>>
>>I reboot all the time and would like to skip the shutdown time (without cutting the power).
>
>
> you want to load&execute a new linux kernel from a running kernel? As far as I know this
> isn't possible. Or what do you mean?
>

There are a few systems which can do it, including the kexec patch that
was recently posted on the linux-kernel mailing list.

However, please note that you may find yourself having trouble because
the kernel you ran three weeks ago screwed up your hardware setting and
the current kernel can't deal with it.

        -hpa