[slightly off-topic] Network booting - Coda

[almesber en lrc.di.epfl.ch]

Trever Adams wrote:
> I am wondering how you can create, including using initial ramdisks if
> needed, a kernel that will boot the system using coda.

As far as the booting is concerned, the procedure is roughly as
follows:

 - build a kernel that has all the required functionality
 - create an initrd that has everything you need to mount a Coda FS
   (I haven't worked with Coda, so I don't know what exactly is involved
   there. I assume that it's roughly similar to NFS, though.)
 - create a script on your initrd that
   - does whatever network initialization is necessary
   - mounts the Coda FS, let's say on /root.d
   - does an  exec /sbin/chroot /root.d /sbin/init
 - if Coda doesn't leave any demon processes running that keep your old
   root file system busy, then you can now unmount the old root (it's
   inaccessible anyway). In order to be able to do this, you need the
   kernel patch in
   ftp://icaftp.epfl.ch/pub/people/almesber/misc/umount-root-3.tar.gz
   or a later version. You also need to redirect /dev/console at chroot
   time, see the NFS root example in README.

If you can't unmount the old root, your system will still work. If the
old root is a RAM disk, as in your case, you just lose that amount of
memory.

- Werner

-- 
  _________________________________________________________________________
 / Werner Almesberger, ICA, EPFL, CH       werner.almesberger en ica.epfl.ch /
/_IN_N_032__Tel_+41_21_693_6621__Fax_+41_21_693_6610_____________________/

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