Re: [gentoo-server] Pure-initramfs boot

[Peter Abrahamsen]

Karl,

I've built a custom stage4 with catalyst based on a recent portage  
snapshot, including several tools I want to use in any environment I  
boot into (netcat, rsync, vim, less, zsh, gentoolkit, etc). I've also  
built a custom minimal install cd based on that stage4 and a 2.6.25-r7  
kernel (now with less data corruption!).

I'll probably develop an overlay for the stage4 (though not, I  
suppose, the cd) that takes the hostname from DHCP and decides what to  
do. I don't know, I haven't thought through this really clearly yet.

All our systems still have harddrives, so I think what might be most  
useful to me is to boot into something that simply mounts the local  
filesystems, an rsync's down any changes to the golden image on my  
boot server. I tried using Puppet for system configuration management  
for a while, but it will never offer the degree of control and  
precision that the system I'm proposing would, and the degree  
abstraction it offers isn't worth the complexity that comes with it.

I do plan on making a repo on github to share what I come up with. It  
isn't much yet, but could prove useful to someone.

I'll send a message when I've done so; ping me if you haven't heard  
anything by the end of the week (and care).

Cheers,
Peter

On Oct 20, 2008, at 6:44 PM, Karl Holz wrote:

> I would like to try to build something like that for ppc and net
> booting it, I have a lot of ram too
>
> Peter where you thinking of writing a script to build the root system?
>
> If you want to start a project I'm down, I know bash, perl and php.
>
> Peace,
>
> Karl