diskless feature in fedora?

[Kaspars Melkis]

Hi Lewi,

> > /usr/bin/mknbi-linux --append "noauto root=/dev/ram0 init=disklessrc
> > NFSROOT=172.16.15.1:/a ramdisk_size=10000 ETHERNET=eth0" vmlinuz
> > initrd.img > vmlinuz.nbi
> > 
> thank, that's solve my problem, 
> I have try your solution. I fault that specify nfs root with /a/root, the correct one is /a (directory
> that countain root and snapshot dir), and directory for redhat-config-netboot should using
> /a too, the help hint is confusing me, "enter nfs exported dir"-> nfs exported /a/root and /a/snapshot


Congratulations! My suggestion for netboot maintainers is to implement
this in redhat-config-netboot. Maybe some checkbox to indicate if the
client machine is PXE or Etherboot and then creating appropriate nbi
image. I would be willing to do myself but, alas, my knowledge of rpm is
limited and I don't know anything about python programming.


> and the problem nfs so slow(with error message still retrying), i dunno if this the real problem 
> I change/add ethernet 8139too with Full Duplex 100mbps, the old one is using tlan(half duplex 10mbps)
> then just running well
> 
> now It's running well, until enter graphical boot
> it show gdm login menu, 
> 
> but gnome restart again when enter desktop, I found that because memory not enough
> (diskless client compaq deskpro 6000, pentium pro, 65mb, S3 savage)
> 
> so I create swap file 256mb and set loop device for that(add script to rc.local)
> so, /dev/loop0 swap swap defaults 0 0 
> but I think it's still slow, 
> what can I do to speeding up? or
> just running xinit in diskless client then query from X in server?

You would not like to run Gnome with only 65 MB RAM. For swap purposes
100 Mbit link is even slower than hd. And yes, X-terminals is the
answer. Install XFree86-xdm on the server and edit /etc/X11/xdm/Xaccess.
Don't run any services on the clients, configure X to use xfs from the
server, and in inittab change xdm to "X -query <server_ip>".

I run such setup even on 10 Mbit coax and this works as a charm. Only
video and sound applications don't work in this way. And the server
should get plenty of RAM.

If you don't run any services on client computers then you even don't
need swap file. BTW, could you make swap file over NFS without kernel
patches? Kernel patching is PITA although Ltsp project provides these
patches. Previously I used ltsp for clients but it was very hard to
customize on client side because of too many differences. I am glad that
I could find a way to use a redhat solution both for the server and the
client. Thanks to RedHat indeed.

> but I still have one more problem, 
> cups don't want running
> 
> what list files that needed to cups running? so I can specify in snapshot/files

When using X-terminals you will only need to ensure that CUPS is working
on the server. The users might be wanting to access CD-ROM drives on
local clients though. I guess that it can be solved by NFS exporting
/mnt/cdrom and mount them on the server.

Kaspars

http://www.isolis.lv