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Booting diskless/diskful/mixed systems with an initrd
Although not required, using an initrd to bootstrap oneSIS nodes can
provide more flexibility than traditional NFSroot methods. The
mk-initrd-oneSIS script (described in section
6.4) is capable of automatically building an initrd
that can be customized for any kind of node,
or generalized for an entire cluster of nodes.
Once the initrd is created,
nodes can boot into diskless/diskful/mixed environments by specifying the
initrd on the kernel command line:
The primary job of the initrd is to bring up a network interface,
configure the interface via DHCP, set the node's hostname, and mount
its root filesystem. Specific kernel modules can be loaded by
supplying options to
mk-initrd-oneSIS.
The root filesystem itself can be mounted via NFS or from a
local disk. When a portion of the root filesystem has been deployed
on a local disk, the initrd can be configured to automatically mount
those partitions before
pivoting into the root filesystem.
An entire cluster (or any individual node or group within it)
can be configured any way you want. The default initrd template can
also be extended to support almost any conceivable
creative boot method.
Note: The standard mkinitrd utility can still be used to bootstrap
diskful nodes in many scenarios.
Subsections
Next: Specifying the root filesystem
Up: Booting nodes
Previous: Traditional diskless NFSroot
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2005-06-19