[asterisk-users] PXE-bootable diskless Asterix distro?

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Sun, Dec 23, 2007 at 02:34:45AM +0100, Vincent wrote:
> Hello
> 
> Since I got the IBM Netvista to boot Linux, and am still waiting for
> the Compact Flash cards that I ordered, I was wondering if someone
> knew of an Asterisk distribution that can run on that kind of diskless
> host?

Yes. I have a version of our CD that boots from PXE. It took minor
changes and rebuilding as a "PXE image", as Debian Live has basic
support of that already.  For simplicity I figure you'll be after a
system that has everything in the initrd, but this is not the case here.
It mounts a network partition to do the rest. We use NFS. CIFS is also
supported. 

Debian Live takes a slightly different direction than astlinux and co.:
Instead of completely rebuilding your system to match a read-only
partition and read-write partition, just union-mount the read-write
partition over the basic read-only partition.

This technique is now common with live CDs. There are also ways to
rewrite some changes, but I have not played with them at all, so I can't
really say how effective they are.

You can get the ISO from http://updates.xorcom.com/iso/ (the live ISO).
Again, that is currently jsut a CD image, but it includes the full
configuration for rebuilding.

For more information about Debian Live:
http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/ . I'm currently using there casper
as I have had problems getting initramfs-live on an Etch system (and had
no time to solve them). But initramfs-live may be more useful to you.


The really nice thing about that system is that it is a
fully-functioning Debian system. Just apt-get install extra software
(with the limitationsof your free RAM, of course).

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
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