RIP linux as an option in PXE menu
Leader: Vladimir Kozhukalov
Reviewers: Dmitry Pyzhov, MIroslav Anashkin
Developers: Vladimir Kozhukalov
QA: Nastya Urlapova
It would be great to have RIP linux as an option in pxe menu. RIP linux is a highly efficient tool if you need to figure out what is goint on on a node which is does not boot or has other system level problems.
It is a tiny change which only assumes putting aditional kernel and ramdisk into tftp and editing pxelinux.
Miroslav Anashkin:
Reviewed. +1
Parted Magic PXE version became a part of the paid PMagic version.
System Rescue CD, although being very good requires data file to be downloaded on every boot.
Blueprint information
- Status:
- Started
- Approver:
- Dmitry Pyzhov
- Priority:
- Medium
- Drafter:
- Vladimir Kozhukalov
- Direction:
- Approved
- Assignee:
- Vladimir Kozhukalov
- Definition:
- Approved
- Series goal:
- Accepted for future
- Implementation:
-
Needs Code Review
- Milestone target:
-
next
- Started by
- Dmitry Pyzhov
- Completed by
Related branches
Related bugs
Sprints
Whiteboard
There are a lot rescure focused live systems but there is a feature thet makes RIP the best of them all - RIP linux is loading itself into initramfs and requires nothing more.
Both kernel and initramfs are loaded into memory by the bootloader either from some drive of from tftp servers and only when both of them are already loaded kernel starts booting. RIP's initramfs weights about 150Mb but you can find an X-less version about 50Mb in the older releases.
Theoreticly such system will work even if there is no drives and no network devices - everything is already loaded in memory. It makes RIP extremely robust, you can do anything with drives or network and you will never disrupt the system with this.
Unfortunatly RIP is not being developed anymore and I'm afraid there will never be new releases. I have been thinking about contacting the author and take over the support of his project.
In it's core RIP is just a slackware with different tools usefull for working with disk installed. The userspace is 32bit and the kernel can be taken either 64 or 32.
We could also develop such system based on tiny/mico core linux or damnsmall linux.
As for now we can use my modified version with Fedora 20 kernel. It will work on the newest servers where old RIP's kernel will either fail to detect net/drives or even hang.
To add RIP into the blue syslinux menu we se when node is booted do the following:
* copy kernels and initramfs into cobbler container
* add a new distribution and point it on rip's kernel and initramfs.
* add profile for this distribution without kickstart and with "add to boot menu" checked.
Gerrit topic: https:/
Addressed by: https:/
Add RIP linux option to cobbler
Addressed by: https:/
Added rescue image into iso
Addressed by: https:/
Fix astute spec
Abandoned: not related to this BP
Work Items
Work items:
Mke custom RIP rootfs with Fedora kernel that would work on recent servers: DONE
Add RIP Distro to cobbler: DONE
Get custom RIP image from Dmitry Ilyin and add it to ISO's repo_dir: TODO
Dependency tree
* Blueprints in grey have been implemented.
