NFS, symlinks and installation trees

[rpjday <rpjday mindspring com>]

  is there a simple explanation for how symlinks are treated under
NFS?  here's what i'm after.

  with each release of red hat, i immediately copy the CD directory
trees under a main directory structure, but keep each CD tree separate
to distinguish between them, so i'll end up with a top level directory
structure of

/7.3
	/inst1		(contents of installation CD 1)
		/images
		/dosutils
		/RedHat   ... etc etc ...
	/inst2
	/inst3

note that each of these subdirectories will have, inside it, the
RedHat/RPMS directory containing their respective RPMS.

  for convenience, i also typically create another directory called
"rpms" or something like that contains nothing but symlinks to *all*
of the actual RPM files in the other three RPMS directories.  in the
case of 7.3, i end up with a directory containing 1439 symlinks to
all of the RPMs, so i can pretend all of the rpms are in one place
to make perusing them easier.

/7.3
	/rpms		(contains 1439 symlinks to other RPM files)
	/inst1
	/inst2		... etc etc ...

  it occurred to me that i can do this, and simultaneously make
available, via NFS, a red hat installation tree, if i create the
directory /7.3/RedHat/RPMS containing all the symlinks.  then
a network-based kickstart client could refer to this host and
to the location "/7.3", under which it would find the installation
tree "RedHat/RPMS" to install from.

  does the fact that the red hat install tree RedHat/RPMS contain
pose any possible problems?  i'm assuming i'd have to export the
entire /7.3 directory since i have to export the locations that
contain the real files as well as the symlinks.

  i'd test this but i have only one host at the moment, and
while i can play by exporting and mounting to myself, i'm not
that would constitute a valid test.

  comments?

rday