[umer]

It could work with fix IP, but i'd rather use a VPN Tunnel

Ähmm - you DO know that such a Setup would result in massive Traffic?

Sure, very fast Internet access on all Clients and VPN tunneling.

Umer:
Well, I do have 3-4 servers with unlimited traffic, each is connected with 100mbit.
For the clients, how fast should the clients internet speed be? 6000mbit/s (usual) connections would not do it? Isn´t it possible to keep only the changing parts of xbmc (like media-sources, thumbnails, menus, playlists, etc.) on the server, and the rest could be installed on the clients?

(Maybe some one wants to support us at the project? If so, you´re most welcome to PM me ;- )

[ttabbal]

Hi ttabbal

a question.
you use your script on a natty host and create a natty chroot
or you use lucid/mav host and make a natty chroot ?

second... the typical installation of this script is a fresh install without ltsp
on which you install xbmc-diskless ?

with 1 nic ? ( so... the guide in first page is intended NOT with 2 nic (typical on alternate edition ) but with 1 nic )

PS. why the system xbmc-diskless is not more ltsp compatible ( the same file in the same position) ?


thanks

I tested with natty on the server and on the chroot.

Yes, I installed without prior installation of LTSP. The deb should install everything you need via the dependencies.

The host only has one NIC in my setup. I see no reason it shouldn't work with a multi-NIC setup, but can't test it myself.

Good question. The boot image seems to be set up to boot quickly at the expense of everything else. At a guess I'd say it's a design decision. Lose the slower stuff that we don't need anyway as it's a single purpose distro. You would have to ask the OP about this, as all I did was modify it a little to work with Natty so I could upgrade some software.

Hopefully something like OpenELEC will make this style of setup obsolete with a nice well supported boot image that's easy to update, rather than a chroot install that you compress to generate the image from.

[goake]

Don't know if anyone is still using this, but how do I make it install a later version of XBMC than what it does?

I've tried entering team-xbmc/unstable ppa in the custom ppa section - that didn't work. Also tried chroot and upgrading from there, that didn't work either.

Any ideas anyone?

[Mupet]

Tried to install diskless-xbmc but said the packages were no longer there. Has the project been closed down?

E: Unable to locate package xbmc-diskless-server

[Fakawi]

Hi,

I have install xbmc-diskless today on a Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit server. The client pc starts with the netboot (the XBMC logo is displayed) but then it get stuck at the login. All that is displayed is:
"Ubuntu 10.04 LTS xbmc-diskless tty1
xbmc-diskless login: "

Thanks

[jacksback]

dushmaniac, you never cease to impress Thanks so much for the awesome howto and scripts. I did have a few problems at first with the script not copying files to the correct location but I manually moved them over to the correct directory and my Acer Revo booted fine.

I'm currently running Ubuntu Server in a VM built on a Solid State drive. Total time to boot on a gigabit lan is about 25 seconds which is awesome. I am however experiencing juddery playback. My server is running Windows 7 64bit and I have only dedicated 512mb ram to the Ubuntu Server. Do I maybe need to add more memory?

ps - I manually added the Aeon skin to the builds directory and regenerated the install which worked perfectly. How difficult will it be to centralize the media database? I would love to have a single database for thumbnails, fanart, etc

Thanks again

[RiChaDo]

I like this idea but I do have a bit off a newbie question.

Is it possible to run this on my readynas duo? if so are the steps the same?

[jacksback]

Do I maybe need to add more memory?

I ended up increasing the virtual machine memory to 2GB but it made no difference because the playback is still jerky. Is there anything else I can try because I never had these issues when booting XBMC from an internal SATA drive?

Thanks

[jacksback]

I ended up increasing the virtual machine memory to 2GB but it made no difference because the playback is still jerky. Is there anything else I can try because I never had these issues when booting XBMC from an internal SATA drive?

Thanks

Building a dedicated Ubuntu server has resolved my playback issues

[jacksback]

Hi,

I have install xbmc-diskless today on a Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit server. The client pc starts with the netboot (the XBMC logo is displayed) but then it get stuck at the login. All that is displayed is:
"Ubuntu 10.04 LTS xbmc-diskless tty1
xbmc-diskless login: "

Thanks

Hi Fakawi

Sounds like your video driver isn't working. What make of graphics card do you have on that client pc?

[francoisst]

Is this going to work as it is with the release of Eden?

[BrunoNZ]

Hey, Nice tutorial!!!
But im having some trouble to make it work..

Ive actually managed to create/pack/install the image and every step of installation was sucessful. But ive stopped at DHCP's Configuration part. I dont know what file i have to edit.

Then when ive checked installation that what came out:

Loading the default configuration
Checking your configuration:
image present: yes
inetd running: yes
tftpd running: yes
tftpd (69) listening: yes
nfsd running: yes
mountd running: yes
statd running: yes
portmap running: yes
/etc/exports has overlay: yes
portmap (111) listening: NO - clients will not be able to persist data
nfs (2049) listening: NO - clients will not be able to persist data

And thats what i got when i run "sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server restart":

* Stopping DHCP server dhcpd3 [fail]
* Starting DHCP server dhcpd3
* check syslog for diagnostics. [fail]

Can someone help me out with it??

And also i would like to know if there is a way to do it on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric). Because now im running a VM with 10.04 to manage to test/install it, but what i really want is to run it on 11.10 so that i dont need to keep VM running all the time.

Thanks!!

[jacksback]

And thats what i got when i run "sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server restart":


Can someone help me out with it??

Hi BrunoNZ

Have you got dhclient.conf and dhcpd.conf in the /etc/dhcp directory, and did you add the netboot information to dhcpd.conf?

[BrunoNZ]

After i wrote the message, i was googling it and i discover that files. I got those files and added the information on dhcpd.conf. After doing that "dhcp3-server restart" worked. But the two Check problems are still there.

Now i found out that the problem is a little bit worse. I cant configurate static IP on VM. I know how to do it, but it simply dont work. Ive tried several times using more than one method. Probably its because VirtualBox configuration. It only work with automatic configuration using DHCP.

I wont be able to look at it today because i have a test tomorrow and i have to study. But after tomorrow i will go deep on it and make it work.

Thanks!

[poyon]

I'll make it a bit more verbose, let it tell where it's connecting to.

try this in the meantime and see if you can connect:
add "break=Xnbd" to the kernel parameters and reboot your diskless box.
it'll break the booting process just before mounting the nbd root

type this in the console:

Code:

mkdir /rofs
nbd-client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 2000 /dev/nbd0
mount -o ro -t squashfs /dev/nbd0 /rofs

replace xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx by the ip of your server.

if that works, see if you can ls /rofs and if your root shows up.

Hello,

For me it is impossible to make work nbd.
When I am trying to mount the /dev/nbd0 I have this message :

on client : end_request: I/O error, dev nbd0, sector 0
unable to read partition table

on server :
Jan 20 11:00:46 eric-desktop nbdrootd[23017]: connect from 192.168.80.142 (192.168.80.142)
Jan 20 11:00:46 eric-desktop nbd_server[23017]: connect from 192.168.80.142, assigned file is /var/lib/xbmc-diskless/images/xbmc.img
Jan 20 11:00:46 eric-desktop nbd_server[23017]: Size of exported file/device is 307118080
Jan 20 11:00:47 eric-desktop nbd_server[23017]: Send failed: Bad file descriptor
Jan 20 11:00:47 eric-desktop nbd_server[23017]: Exiting.



Can you please help me?

Thanks
Eric B.