Need Help: PXE Booting OpenELEC from unRAID

[johnodon]

I posted this on the unRAID forums also as I wasn't sure where the problem lies...

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Hi All

unRAID v5rc12a

I'm hoping sonmeone can help me (cough...PeterB..cough cough) since it seems some of you are doing this successfully and I am running into a few issues. Here is what I have done so far and how far I got...

I pretty much followed this blog: http://stuffbyjeroen.blogspot.com/2011/0...-boot.html

- I created a share in unRAID called "PXE" and exported NFS/Public
- I created the following folder structure in the PXE share and have the following files:

/mnt/user/PXE
/tftpboot
chain.c32
mboot.c32
memdisk
menu.c32
pxelinux.0
/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
C0A801C5 <--- the boot file for my openelec machine (contents are shown below)
/tftpboot/openelec
KERNEL
SYSTEM
/tftpboot/openelec/storage

The contents of the C0A801C5 are as follows:

DEFAULT OpenElec.tv
PROMPT 0

LABEL OpenElec.tv
KERNEL openelec/KERNEL
APPEND ip=dhcp boot=NFS=192.168.1.10:/mnt/user/PXE/tftpboot/openelec disk=NFS=192.168.1.10:/mnt/user/PXE/tftpboot/openelec/storage overlay

Per the blog linked above, I copied tftp-hpa-0.48-i486-1.tgz to the /boot/packages folder in unRAID and ran:

installpkg /boot/extra/tftp-hpa-0.48-i486-1.tgz

I then ran and also put this line in my GO script:

/usr/sbin/in.tftpd -l -s /mnt/user/PXE/tftpboot

I use ClearOS as my firewall/router and added the following line to the /etc/dnsmasq.conf file:

dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0,unRAID,192.168.1.10

Finally, I chmod'd all files under /mnt/user/PXE/tftpboot to 777:

chomd 777 /mnt/user/PXE/tftpboot/*

My test PXE instance is an ESXi VM with no virtual HD so it automatically defaults to PXE. PXE finds the TFTP server without issue and loads the boot file for the VM and the kernel. The screen shots below show how far I get and the error that is eventually displayed.









I verified that my NFS shares are setup correctly as I can add them as an NFS datastore in ESXi.

I even tried taking NFS out of the mix with the following boot file but I'm not sure if that is a viable option. It did, however, produce a different error:

LABEL OpenELEC
MENU LABEL ^OpenELEC
kernel openelec/KERNEL
append boot=openelec disk=openelec/storage overlay

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

John

[e_esprit]

How are your NFS shares exported ?
Do you only export /mnt/user/PXE or both /mnt/user/PXE/openelec/storage and /mnt/user/PXE/openelec/ ?
Are you authorizing the IP address of your VM (and not only the hypervisor) to access those shares ?

[johnodon]

I am exporting only /mnt/user/PXE and security is set to Public. I can mount that share from any client without the needs for credentials.

I got so frustrated with trying to do this in unRAID that I moved the TFTP server to my firewall (ClearOS) and I am having the same issue. If I try to use NFS, I get the "could not mount" error. If I take NFS out of the mix I get the "Unknown Filesystem" error.

John

[ultraman]

Did you tried to export /mnt/user/PXE/tftpboot/openelec?

[johnodon]

I'm not quite sure I can do that in unRAID...at least not from the GUI.

This is what I see with debugging turned on...

[johnodon]

I got it working. Apparently ESXI/VMs do not play well with booting OpenELEC via PXE. Once I tried my Fusion box (well...tried again once I knew what I was doing), it booted right up.

John

[e_esprit]

Yep, your last screenshot shows some "Network Unreachable" error messages, I guess the virtual ethernet device is not supported by OpenELEC kernel (but it should be possible in VMware to change the ethernet device emulation to something more "standard").
The important thing is that you have it working.

[johnodon]

Well esprit...you triggered a tought that I did not have before...

I was using VMXNET3 for my LAN adpater in the VM. I rebuilt the VM and this time used E1000. I used the KERNEL/SYSTEM from OpenELEC-Virtual.x86_64-devel-20130422151249-r14085 out in the Sources repo.

OpeneELEC VM is PXE booting.



FYI...I tried to do tthe same with the Generic flavor but it was a no-go.

John

[Abnorm]

Hi,

Been trying to get this working on unRAID v6 b3 (w/xen support).
Installed dnsmasq for 64bit slackware
created a NFS share via unRAID - /mnt/user/tftp with security set to public, i even added *(rw,sync) to the NFS Export
set it up partly following a guide (i have some differences in share locations and ips) I found here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.p...ic=31297.0

PXE boot works but It cannot get read-write access at all to /mnt/user/tftp/images/openELEC/storage/08606e6e2011 and the booting process stops at debug.
I try to mount it manually in the debug console but it says it cannot contact the server, I think prolly nfs mounting in this console doesn't work though, not supported i reckon.

So, my config is correct, tried chmod -R 777 on the storage folder, chown to nobody:users even, no go.
Anyone got an idea for fixing this?

Nevermind, I fixed it, thanks for the help internet! (not)
On unRAID b3 which I'm currently using there is a bug in NFS

1. Set the NFS share you're using to Security - Private. Then click "apply" in unRAID webconsole
2. Add the following rule to your share: *(sec=sys,rw,insecure,anongid=100,anonuid=99,all_squash)
3. Click "Apply"

Hopefully someone else doesn't need to waste a lot of hours on troubleshooting this.