[Vitani]

Hi all,

I've got a HTPC which is hard drive-less, and at the moment is happily network booting MythTV from my Mythbuntu server, however the MythTV front-end is not.. um... fantastic. I've been using XBMC on my Xbox for a while now, and I've always loved it's genius simplicity, so my question is; can I use XBMC Live or XBMCbuntu as a LAN boot image?

I've done a bit of Googling, and the best link I can find on creating an image is this one - http://www.kegel.com/linux/pxe.html, particularly the "Using PXE to boot diskless Linux" section. But before I start breaking my current setup (and annoying the missus in the process) I'd like to know if an XBMC image will work when booting over LAN.

Has anyone tried this, and got some advice they can pass on to me?

[topfs2]

Personally I'm not very read up on netbooting but there is no reason XBMC won't run via it, unfortunatly I doubt XBMC live will be a good choice, XBMCbuntu guide, in it's current condition, not so much either.

Either way you can run XBMC Live from a usb drive perfectly (which is what I do currently) to get it nearly diskless. atleast it's dead quite

If your still set on network boot I'd suggest getting ubuntu network booting and just install xbmc ontop of that one. The linux masterminds will probably have better answers though.

Cheers,
Tobias

[mkortstiege]

Sure, this will work as every other pxe boot environment.

[rrambo]

Shouldn't be too difficult.. I'm already pxe booting geexbox in the kids rooms and I'm a network admin who is using pxe boot for about 300 clients running thinstation to connect via rdp to Server 2008 so I'm fairly knowledgeable on thin clients... I've also toyed with LTSP which is very easy to setup... xbmc wouldn't be very difficult to pxe boot.. I would suggest setting up an LTSP server and going from there if you're starting from scratch...

*edit*

With an image that size don't bother with anything less than gigabit..

[rrambo]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DisklessUbuntuHowto

This is fairly easy to setup.... you're not really gaining much over booting from USB but it's still cool and you'll also be running dead quiet... like I stated earlier, gigabit only... or you'll pull your hair out waiting for it to boot

[Vitani]

Thanks for the info guys, I've spent about six or so hours on trying to get it working today, and after all my efforts I found this - http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-image/wiki...ADiskImage - which when followed by this - http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-image/wiki/SanBoot - seems to walk you through the entire process. Typical eh?

Still not there yet, but I shall reply once I get it working incase anyone else wants to do it in the future.

[Vitani]

Just for my own reference, and for the help of anyone else trying this, there are two things the guide does not tell you:

1) You must call the iso "XBMC_Live-Atlantis-Beta_1.iso"

2) If you run the script to create the image (i.e. "you are brave [and] do the following in the command line: sudo ./build-xbmc-disk.sh") you need to re-mount some images before continuing to the SanBoot guide:

Code:

sudo mount -o loop XBMC_Live-Atlantis-Beta_1.iso iso
sudo mount -o loop iso/rootfs.img iso-rootfs
sudo mount -o loop,offset=213857280 xbmc-beta-4G.img bootfs

[mulder77de]

Well, I had a XBMC installation running through PXE, in my case as an iSCSI installation.
Was working great.

Except... Standby/Resume wouldn't get the iSCSI root filesystem remounted, so I gave up this setup as Standby/Resume is high priority for my system. I am sure these problems can get sorted out.

I ended in a 4 GB USB drive which works great for me.


Markus

[pko66]

I'm thinking that maybe a hybrid approach is more interesting:

"pure" network booting:
- need to create the pxe thing, server, etc.
- configuration etc on server side
- totally silent (no hard disk)
- slow unless gigabit (and even gigabit...)
- no extra power needed
- easiest config sharing among several installations on the same network

"pure" local with hard disk
- fast
- everything (OS, xbmc, config, database) local
- potentially noisy
- local hard disk needs local power (more noise/heat)
- fast!
- difficult config sharing

"pure" local with USB pendrive, SD card o similar
- fast read (boot), slow write
- potential problem with writes (flash memory limitations)
- totally silent
- everything (OS, xbmc, config, database) local
- no extra power needed
- difficult config sharing

"hybrid": local boot with pendrive/usb, server side home dir
- fast read (boot), writing only in network disk, as fast as network
- totally silent
- no extra power needed
- even xbmc could be remote if you want, to ease upgrades
- local OS, (maybe) local xbmc, config and database on server
- easy sharing of config/database, OS upgrades local, xbmc upgrades (maybe) local

The hybrid approach would be: local boot from an USB pendrive or SD card where the OS resides. once booted, a network disk is mounted (samba, nfs...) where the user's home directory resides (so the library database and configuration files reside in the server, and can be easily shared -that is, replicated- among several installations). The xbmc binary could also be on the server to allow easier upgrades. There will be no or very few local writes (system logs etc. could perhaps be in a RAM disk or in the server disk) to avoid the slow flash memory writes and media degradation.

What do you think about this idea? it could be as simple as some network disk mounts from an early init.d script, the rest being a complete standard ubuntu or live xbmc installation. I think it reaps almost all the benefits of the network booting and the local installation approaches.

[Vitani]

What do you think about this idea? it could be as simple as some network disk mounts from an early init.d script, the rest being a complete standard ubuntu or live xbmc installation. I think it reaps almost all the benefits of the network booting and the local installation approaches

Hmm, didn't think of a half-and-half idea, sounds reasonable, and I guess installing XBMC Live onto a USB pen drive is fairly simple?

If I then, as you say, mount /home as a network share (using samba) I should end up with a simpler (and speedier) solution than getting PXE working.


There's a very important note at the bottom of the XBMC Live page:

XBMC Live contains XBMC for Linux compiled with the 'standalone' mode, this enable[s ...] Power Management, and Network Management.

Which immediately makes me decide to use XBMC Live over the standard Linux installation.

I'll keep you posted.

[noumenon]

This seems like it might be a good way to have multiple instances of xbmc (ie different rooms) all share the same database. Something people have been clamoring about for a while now. cool idea.



noumenon

[Vitani]

Thanks to all of you for your help. I've decided to give up on network booting as my DHCP server appears to be screwed (I uninstalled dchp3-server, rebooted, but it's still giving out IPs ... wtf?) and am attempting to use a USB stick. Still having problems (works fine on my monitor, but screws up on a TV), but I'm not going to derail this thread with those problems :o)

So to finish, if you're going to try network booting xbmc; good luck, and I hope you get it working!

[rrambo]

Thanks to all of you for your help. I've decided to give up on network booting as my DHCP server appears to be screwed (I uninstalled dchp3-server, rebooted, but it's still giving out IPs ... wtf?) and am attempting to use a USB stick. Still having problems (works fine on my monitor, but screws up on a TV), but I'm not going to derail this thread with those problems :o)

So to finish, if you're going to try network booting xbmc; good luck, and I hope you get it working!

I'm going to do it this weekend just out of curiosity.. and to give instruction to those who may wish to try... I'm mainly concerned with boot times.. shouldn't take me long as I already have pxe booting working on my home network..

[Vitani]

Good luck rrambo! Let us know how you get on.

[pko66]

This seems like it might be a good way to have multiple instances of xbmc (ie different rooms) all share the same database. Something people have been clamoring about for a while now. cool idea.

Well, you could share the database as long as it is used by just ONE user at any given time, since the sqlite database engine does not allow concurrent sharing...

Another approach could be to just copy one "master" database over all the different users when they are not in use. You should be careful to upgrade always the "master"