Diskless workstations

[Daniel J Walsh]

This diskless is a single /root directory containing all files and a 
/.snapshot directory containing
files that are specific to the client. (A very small subset).  It then 
uses mount -o bind to mount the
snapshot files over the /root files on the client.  You need to do a 
chroot on the server to up2date it
or rpm install it.    It will not support older versions of RH.  It 
should work on RH9 or greater and
it might work on RH8.

Dan


Stephen Smoogen wrote:

>Thanks I will try to look at this next week. What I am trying to figure
>out is the best/fastest way to set up new diskless clients that have
>'full' installs.
>
>Currently we have two systems here. 
>
>The first is  where /usr and some other directories are stored on the
>master tree and then the few remaining (/lib /var /etc /initrd etc) are
>seperate per machine. This is very fast to bring up a new machine
>because the date to be copied is small (20-40 megs on average). However
>it is a pain in the ass to update as all the clients have to be rebuilt
>after errata that change /etc, /lib etc occur.
>
>The second is much more disk intensive but easier to maintain. In this
>version each client gets a complete install in an NFS tree. This allows
>for a lot of customization per client (some can run 7.1 while others run
>9.0). Maintenance is much easier because RPM can be run on each of the
>trees seperately. However installs are SLOW because they are either
>server side using a chroot anaconda (which I havent gotten working
>seamlessly) or the client is doing all the writes via NFS.
>
>
>On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 07:23, Daniel J Walsh wrote:
>  
>
>>I have been working on a package called redhat-config-netboot that 
>>allows you to setup diskless environments
>>using NFS, as well as network installations.  It is based somewhat off 
>>of LTSB.  It is basically a series of scripts and python code that sets 
>>up a PXE boot environment and an diskless NFS partition.  
>>
>>ftp://people.redhat.com/dwalsh/netboot
>>
>>Comments welcome.
>>
>>Dan
>>
>>Chuck Wolber wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>No we do everything via NFS at the moment. Using a big ramdisk would cut
>>>>into why all the machines have so much memory and CPU's. Basically the
>>>>idea is that all CPU cycles are local and all data is foreign. The
>>>>approach to this seems to follow either SGI or Sun ways of doing
>>>>diskless clients. I like the Sun way of doing it (with each client
>>>>getting its own tree) versus the SGI where most is common with the
>>>>server and clients need a rebuild if server code changes.
>>>>   
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Can a user move to another workstation and resume their session? I've seen 
>>>this done with RFID tags that automatically detach your session if you 
>>>move away from the terminal and re-attach you when you move closer.
>>>
>>>-Chuck
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>
>>
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>>    
>>