Boot from server?

[Skywatch]

I was thinking of setting my Xbians to boot from usb as I have a SD card that has gone bad and I think it may be all the writing to it that casued it to happen.

Then I wondered if it is possible to boot from a CIFS/SMB connected server? What would be the set up if it is possible and would auto backups still be possible?

[Nachteule]

(12th Sep, 2016 08:03 PM)Skywatch Wrote:  I was thinking of setting my Xbians to boot from usb as I have a SD card that has gone bad and I think it may be all the writing to it that casued it to happen.

You always need sd-card booting from for < RPi3. Only RPi3 can boot from USB directly (but this is still experimental feature)

Quote:Then I wondered if it is possible to boot from a CIFS/SMB connected server?

AFAIK it is not possible having root fs on CIFS/SMB. Only NFS is supported

Quote:What would be the set up if it is possible and would auto backups still be possible?

That is interesting question I suppose it should work. I can't see anything hardcoded in the backup functions

[Skywatch]

Thanks for the reply

I never thought it would be easy, but with a mix of pi1 and pi2 it would be a bit hit and miss.

The only reason I run smb is to allow a windows PC to also share and access the mounts. I thought that would not happen if they were NFS. Is that right?

I'll order a USB stick and see how that goes.

[Nachteule]

(13th Sep, 2016 04:01 AM)Skywatch Wrote:  I never thought it would be easy, but with a mix of pi1 and pi2 it would be a bit hit and miss.

Heh, after you have it done you will say: man, that was quite easy

Quote:The only reason I run smb is to allow a windows PC to also share and access the mounts. I thought that would not happen if they were NFS. Is that right?

I do not know if Windows > 7 have NFS client support, I suppose NO. So it is not possible without installing 3rd party client software to mount nfs shares. And, it is still pain to map *nix and windows user names / id's.

Quote:I'll order a USB stick and see how that goes.

Yeah, but please keep in mind, you still need sd-card for booting

[Skywatch]