On 2012-09-20 09:42, Vincent Hoffman wrote:
On 19/09/2012 06:53, dweimer wrote:
I was just trying some proof of concept testing to see if I could
get
a system booting with no local disk using iSCSI running from my
FreeNAS box.
I got started, by first booting a 9.1-RC1 CD, into live CD, created
a
/tmp/iscsi.conf used kldload to load the iscsi initiator, connected
to
the target, created a gpt boot partition, swap partition and just a
single / volume using remianing space. Copied the bootcode, created
the file system, extracted the system etc. Created a loader.conf
file, added the iscsi_initiator_load="YES" option, copied my
/tmp/iscsi.conf file to the new file system at /etc/iscsi.conf
created
a /etc/fstab file using the gpart labels to mount / and swap
partitions.
Booted the system from the iPXE.iso, ran the necessary configuration
options, connected to the iscsi volume, and booted from it. It does
launch the bootcode, as expected, and then breaks failing to mount
root.
Whoch I actually expected, I have proved I can install to an iSCSI
volume, I can connect to that iSCSI volume prior to loading the
kernel, and load the kernel from it.
What I can't seem to find any information on is how to mount iSCSI
volumes at boot on FreeBSD, so that the kernel can mount the root
partition. Does anyone have any idea how to do this, or if its even
possible?
Sounds like you need this
http://freebsd.1045724.n5.nabble.com/iSCSI-boot-driver-0-2-5-isboot-ko-has-been-released-td5736301.html
Vince
That's looking promising, I had actually ran across an earlier version
of this last night, of course that was all dealing with 8.1. Will
definitely do more looking into it, however it doesn't seem to be at a
point I would consider running anything more than a test environment
from it.
My actual goal with this project if the proof of concept panned out was
to replace the old aging internal SATA Mirrored drives in my Home
web/email server (They are showing a decent number of smart pre-fail
indicators, but still working for now). I have fairly new SATA drives
in my FreeNAS box, and thought maybe since my Gig network is barely
being taxed, that I could save some cash for new disk drives, to be put
towards future upgrades to the FreeNAS box instead.
However I am not ruling out the possibility altogether yet, and am
going to run some tests with booting from a very minimal set of required
files on a USB thumb Drive, and mounting everything else from iSCSI. I
am already running all my VMware Test Virtual Machines on my workstation
from an iSCSI volume mounted from my FreeNAS box, and know that it
performs well enough in my network to handle the small amount of traffic
to my website and my email without any problems.
--
Thanks,
Dean E. Weimer
http://www.dweimer.net/
_______________________________________________
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
