Running SLES on a disk less client. Possible? - Suse
This is a discussion on Running SLES on a disk less client. Possible? - Suse ; Hi Group,
I have a question concerning running SLES from a RAM disk.
Is it possible to create a SLES system running only out of memory
without having a hard disk?
My idea is to have somewhere a installed version ...
-
Running SLES on a disk less client. Possible?
Hi Group,
I have a question concerning running SLES from a RAM disk.
Is it possible to create a SLES system running only out of memory
without having a hard disk?
My idea is to have somewhere a installed version of SLES.
Convert this into an image. Something like a big initrd file.
Boot a disk less client via a PXE server.
Copy the created image via tftp/http/nfs to the disk less system.
Keeping all the files in memory (RAM disk) and run it from there.
BTW: I’m not talking about NFS boot with NFS root etc.
How can I do this?
Has somebody done this before? I assume for parallel clustering this
is used.
Any link where I get more information are welcome. Google doesn’t tell
me what I want. Or maybe I’m asking the wrong questions … ;-)
BTW: The less tweaking of the SLES installation the better it is.
Background: I have a couple of Blades with huge amount of memory
(16G). For maintenance reasons I like to remove all disks. A normal
SLES installation doesn’t need a lot of memory. Let’s assume 1G (it is
less). This keeps 15G for applications. This should be more then
enough.
As an example maybe someone has seen this with the SystemRescueCD.
This can boot via PXE and can then be disconnected from the network.
Everything is coming from memory or ram disk, no NFS is used.
Any idea, help, comment or link is very much appreciated.
Thanks for reading this
Matthias
-
Re: Running SLES on a disk less client. Possible?
Mattes wrote:
> Hi Group,
>
> I have a question concerning running SLES from a RAM disk.
> Is it possible to create a SLES system running only out of memory
> without having a hard disk?
Not sure if there's a solution out there or not, but certainly
something could be crafted to make a network connection and
copy to ramdisk as part of the initrd and transfer control
to that as the root (I would think).
-
Re: Running SLES on a disk less client. Possible?
On 2008-10-10, Mattes wrote:
> Hi Group,
>
> I have a question concerning running SLES from a RAM disk.
> Is it possible to create a SLES system running only out of memory
> without having a hard disk?
DamnSmallLinux can be booted totally to RAM with the boot option "toram"
I have it on a USB stick and it boots from there.
No disks or CD drive in that small machine I normally run it in.
If DSL can do it I'm sure SLES can be made to do it.
OTOH I'm not the one who can do it 
DamnSmall Linux there copies its Live image first to RAM and then runs
in there.
Since openSUSE can run from a live CD why wouldn't SLES be
able to do it, too?
>
> My idea is to have somewhere a installed version of SLES.
> Convert this into an image. Something like a big initrd file.
> Boot a disk less client via a PXE server.
> Copy the created image via tftp/http/nfs to the disk less system.
> Keeping all the files in memory (RAM disk) and run it from there.
Your idea is quite good, I think.
I'm also quite confident it can be done.
Unfortunately I couldn't do it myself though 
>
> BTW: I’m not talking about NFS boot with NFS root etc.
>
> How can I do this?
> Has somebody done this before? I assume for parallel clustering this
> is used.
> Any link where I get more information are welcome. Google doesn’t tell
> me what I want. Or maybe I’m asking the wrong questions … ;-)
>
> Any idea, help, comment or link is very much appreciated.
> Thanks for reading this
> Matthias
See if you get anything out of this:
http://dev.compiz-fusion.org/~cybero...-image-easily/
Here's a tiny url:
http://tinyurl.com/46zlg4
--
Vahis
http://waxborg.servepics.com
Congressman Wilson has an expression:
"You can teach them to type, but you can't teach them to grow tits."
