The front ends are configured via a CCPC (credit card PC) running on the board. The CCPCs are x486 CPUs booting via the network. They don't have any local storage. The boot image as well as the mount directories are accessed via NFS (see NfsSetup).

The NFS server is bgvctrl. The boot images are located in /nfsexports/ccpc/

Some documentation: http://lhcb-daq.web.cern.ch/lhcb-daq/ccpc/baseinstall/setupserver.html

yum -y install tftp-server
yum -y install dhcp

— add new ccpc (for example ODIN)

edit in bgvctrl:
/etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
with:

host tfcodin16.lbdaq.cern.ch {
        option root-path "10.10.10.254:/nfsexports/ccpc/bgvodin";
        hardware ethernet 00:30:59:01:C8:FC; # odin board v2 00
        fixed-address 10.10.10.40;
}

service dhcpd restart


— prepare image
cd /nfsexports/ccpc
tar -zxf ccpcseed_org.tar
mv seed bgvodin

# example to copy a directory to copy a ccpc image to a new image
# tar -cf - -C /nfsexports/ccpc/bgvodin . | tar xpf - -C /nfsexports/ccpc/newimage

When a frontend board starts it should be visible in the /var/log/messages

First the CCPC requests an IP address, then it mounts the boot (root) image, then it mounts the other NFS shares