[syslinux] Looking for ways to save space - AKA how to boot multiple machines from the same root

[Don Cupp]

So while you maybe using pxelinux, and more generally the pxe protocol for booting, your real challange is in the linux init process. That hostname file is only really used during startup to set a system wide hostname variable. Your chosen distro just happens to use a file with a static entry to do this. Other distro's use network files compared against mac address's. There are a bunch of ways to go about setting the hostname if your willing to dig into init. You could even use pxelinux to pass a variable via the kernel cmd_line, but you will likely need to alter your distro's init scripts to look for and utilize that variable.
 


     On Tuesday, August 25, 2015 5:51 PM, Marc Tousignant <myrdhn at gmail.com> wrote:
   

 #yiv8083307410 #yiv8083307410 -- _filtered #yiv8083307410 {font-family:Helvetica;panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4;} _filtered #yiv8083307410 {panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv8083307410 {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv8083307410 {font-family:Verdana;panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}#yiv8083307410 #yiv8083307410 p.yiv8083307410MsoNormal, #yiv8083307410 li.yiv8083307410MsoNormal, #yiv8083307410 div.yiv8083307410MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;}#yiv8083307410 a:link, #yiv8083307410 span.yiv8083307410MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv8083307410 a:visited, #yiv8083307410 span.yiv8083307410MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv8083307410 span.yiv8083307410EmailStyle17 {color:#1F497D;}#yiv8083307410 .yiv8083307410MsoChpDefault {font-size:10.0pt;} _filtered #yiv8083307410 {margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}#yiv8083307410 div.yiv8083307410WordSection1 {}#yiv8083307410 Because everything I searched on for a PXELinux mailing list pointed me to here. And because PXELinux is a derivative of SYSLinux. If there is a better mailing list for my questions, please let me know.  Since you say its possible, care to enlighten me on how to do so?  Marc  From: Don Cupp [mailto:doncuppjr at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2015 10:58 AM
To: Marc Tousignant <myrdhn at gmail.com>; syslinux at zytor.com
Subject: Re: [syslinux] Looking for ways to save space - AKA how to boot multiple machines from the same root  Yes it is possible. Not sure why you posted this to syslinux though.    On Monday, August 24, 2015 10:46 PM, Marc Tousignant via Syslinux <syslinux at zytor.com> wrote:  I have several machines, same hardware and config, but one tiny little
change.. the hostname. Each one of these diskless machines needs its own
hostname.

Presently my pxelinux.cfg is setup like:

prompt 1

default Gentoo

timeout 10



label Gentoo

kernel boot/kernel-3.16.5-gentoo

APPEND root=/dev/nfs rw ip=dhcp
nfsroot=192.168.1.10:/RAID/diskless/XXXXX-mythtv-0.27-fixes,tcp,rsize=131072
,wsize=131072,nfsvers=3

Where the XXXXX is the hostname. Because I have 3 of these machines I am
using up 3 times the disk space.

I am wondering if there is a way all 3 of them can run from the same
nfsroot, but somehow have different hostnames/machine-ids.

Presently the hostname comes from /RAID/diskless/XXXXX
-mythtv-0.27-fixes/etc/conf.d/hostname and the machine-id from
/RAID/diskless/XXXXX -mythtv-0.27-fixes/etc/machine-id and these are the
only 2 differing files from machine to machine.



Marc

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