KNOPPIX Terminal Server

Preamble

• This page will be used to document and describe how to boot KNOPPIX off the network using Samba as opposed to NFS.
  • The page will pull from several resources to provide an official reference at the KNOPPIX site for all to use.
  • Just starting so page will be in progress for a bit and will need to be catagorized.
• You are welcome to contact me on model (I have a day job, so please bare with me see Rjent).

Model

• Most of the this information is an exert from a paper on the model at http://www.mgr3.k12.mo.us/~rjn103s/HybridNotes-20060504-1.pdf

The methodology for the hybrid environment uses a Common Internet File System (CIFS) to boot up KNOPPIX. The base work for this model utilizes existing resources and information from http://knoppix.manty.net . The setup information provided here assumes you have PXE booting via TFTP already setup on the boot server. The rest is as follows:

• KNOPPIX:

Download KNOPPIX 4.0.2 (or newer) and burn to a CD.

Download the miniroot.gz and integrate for the pxe bootup.
To do this, place the miniroot.gz in the /tftpboot/hybrid/pxeboot/ directory.
Make a directory under /tftpboot/hybrid/pxeboot/
called knoppix and copy the /boot/isolinux/linux file from the
KNOPPIX CD to /tftpboot/hybrid/pxeboot/knoppix/

Copy the KNOPPIX folder from the KNOPPIX CD to a location on server of
/hybrid/knoppixshare

Modify the pxe boot menu located at /tftpboot/hybrid/pxeboot/pxelinux.cfg with the below addition:

 LABEL Knoppix CIFS
 KERNEL knoppix/linux
 APPEND secure nfsdir=//xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/knoppix_share nodhcp lang=en ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init apm=poweroff nomce vga=791 initrd=miniroot.gz quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix

Note1: the above APPEND line must appear as a single line in your pxelinux.cfg/default file

Note2: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the server running the samba share.

• Samba

Samba provides the CIFS services, so we setup a share on server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. An example smb.conf is listed below:

[global]
 workgroup = HYBRIDGROUP
 netbios name = HYBRIDSERVER
 security = share
 guest account = nobody
[knoppix_share]
 comment = Knoppix Boot Data
 path = /hybrid/knoppix_share
 read only = Yes
 guest ok = Yes

Note: After changes to smb.conf you will need to restart samba services.

• DHCP Services

Example entry for dhcpd.conf below

group {
 filename "hybrid/pxeboot/pxelinux.0";
 host hybrid51 {
    hardware ethernet MA:CA:DD:RE:SS:ED; fixedaddress xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx;
 }
}

Note: After changes to dhcpd.conf restart or reload dhcp services.

At this point, you should be ready to test boot your KNOPPIX session.

References

• The KNOPPIX® terminal server over SMB/CIFS page - The place where all the starting work was derived.