Stateless Works! but...

[Carlos Knowlton]

>>I finally got a diskless machine to boot from a stateless server!   
>>There are a lot of "can't do that on a read-only filesystem" messages, 
>>at boot, and I can't login, there must be something I'm missing.
>>    
>>
>
>	Where exactly is it breaking?
>
>	Are you sure the snapshot process completed correctly, that the
>readonly-root package is installed on the snapshot etc.?
>
>  
>
The snapshot seemed to install smoothly, but I'm not sure if no errors 
means "correctly".  I did verify that "read-only root" and 
"stateless-clients" is installed on the snapshot.

This is what's happening: 
-The client boots
-Finds dhcp/PXE on the stateless server, and installs the kernel
-initrd does a pivot-root to the NFS-mounted snapshot, (and here's where 
things get interesting)
-when rc.readonlyroot runs, I get a series of "find: cannot access 
[file]: permission denied"
-then when the rest of the processes start to run, some work, some 
fail.  These fail:
    -CUPS
    -nfslock
    -netfs (this just hangs for a few minutes, and then RPC time's out)
    -xfs
    -nscd

Since netfs won't mount NFS filesystems, I don't have access to user 
data folders, though I was finally able to get it to login (LDAP didn't 
like plain-text user passwords =).

Anyway, the file permissions are the thing that seem to be causing most 
of the trouble.  Everything that isn't world-readable is inaccessible, 
even to root!  (why is that?)  Though I tried to make everything on the 
snapshot in /etc and /var world-readable, this was a mistake, because 
though some things worked, others broke, I assume because they didn't 
like their private files exposed like this.  Either way, I still 
couldn't get nfs exports to mount right. 

>>Is there a "post-image-installation" document describing how to overcome 
>>these problems?   Also, I had to figure out how to use the 
>>"stateless-servers" command to add the nfs/rsync paths before the cron 
>>job would work that configured the client pxelinux files  under 
>>/tftpboot.  I may have overlooked it somehow, but shouldn't that be in 
>>the tutorial?
>>    
>>
>
>	Ah, yes that should be in the tutorial. Patches for the tutorial are
>very, very welcome :-)
>
>Cheers,
>Mark.
>
>  
>
I'd love to, but... Hmm, ever thought of wiki-fying the tutorial?  I'm 
still pretty new, I haven't learned the fine art of patch generating yet.


Thanks for all your help!
Carlos