Bug 300368 – tftpboot images should have scp and nfs

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Matt Turner 2010-01-10 05:23:01 UTC]

Since by definition to use a tftpboot image, you've got to have a second computer, it stands to reason that you might also want to scp the stage tar ball over, or share portage and distfiles with nfs.

They'll make the image larger, but make it a lot more useful as well.

[Comment 1 Tiago Cunha (RETIRED) 2010-01-12 16:22:54 UTC]

They do have dropbear's scp implementation, although renamed by the ebuild to dbscp. That might be a problem if you're copying a file from a remote machine using OpenSSH to the netboot host (you'll get the "scp: command not found" error).

Nonetheless, in the meantime, from the top of my head there are a few solutions:
1. Link dbscp to scp with: ln -s /usr/bin/dbscp /usr/bin/scp.
2. Copy the files from the netboot host with dbscp.
3. Use ssh to copy the file directly to the netboot host by using: cat ${FILE} | ssh root@netboot-host 'cat > /mnt/gentoo/${FILE}'.

As for making the images include the necessary things (ie add support in the kernel, and install nfs-utils) to mount NFS targets, I'll have to think about it.

[Comment 2 Tiago Cunha (RETIRED) 2010-01-29 00:00:07 UTC]

There should be a new image in a mirror near you in the next couple of hours.

It uses a tweaked net-misc/dropbear ebuild which symlinks /usr/bin/scp to /usr/bin/dbscp, and has support for mounting NFS targets by compiling the support into busybox, the kernel, and installing net-nds/portmap. No NFSv4 support, though. It's still experimental, anyway.

Thanks for the report.