Hi Nico, we are already doing exactly that: Loading initrd via iPXE which contains the necessary modules and scripts to boot an RBD boot dev. Works just fine. And Ilya just helped to work out the last show stopper, thanks again for that! We are using a modified LTSP system for this. We have proposed some patches to LTSP to get the necessary facilities upstream but Alkis Georgopoulos first want to see that there is enough interest for that before he considers merging our patch or creating the necessary changes himself. However the necessary initrd code is already available in this merge request: https://github.com/trickkiste/ltsp/blob/feature-boot_method-rbd/debian/ltsp-rbd.initramfs-script I see you are from Switzerland - neighbors! Out of interest, what are you planning to use this for? Servers, Thin/Fat Clients? My best regards Markus Am So., 16. Mai 2021 um 23:18 Uhr schrieb Nico Schottelius < nico.schottelius@xxxxxxxxxxx>: > > Hey Markus, Ilya, > > you don't know with how much interest I am following this thread, > because ... > > >> Generally it would be great if you could include the proper initrd code > for RBD and CephFS root filesystems to the Ceph project. You can happily > use my code as a starting point. > >> > >> > https://github.com/trickkiste/ltsp/blob/feature-boot_method-rbd/debian/ltsp-rbd.initramfs-script > > > > I think booting from CephFS would require kernel patches. It looks > > like NFS and CIFS are the only network filesystems supported by the > > init/root infrastructure in the kernel. > > ... we have been looking for a while to a discussion about using RBD > (not cephfs) as a replacement for a hard disk. Linux can map RBD > devices, so should Linux not also be able to *boot* from an rbd device > similar to a regular disk? > > I did not find any example of this yet, but I'd assume that conceptually > one would probably: > > - preload a Linux kernel from the network (potentially via ipxe) > - specify root=rbd://fsid/pool/image > > Or in a even *better* variant: > > - the bootloader (ipxe?) can map RBD > - the bootloader pre-loads enough of the image for reading the partition > - the bootloader either loads the kernel + initramfs *or* chainloads > another bootloader > > What are your thoughts on this? Do-able or totally crazy? > > Best regards, > > Nico > > -- > Sustainable and modern Infrastructures by ungleich.ch > _______________________________________________ ceph-users mailing list -- ceph-users@xxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to ceph-users-leave@xxxxxxx
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