Diskless workstations

[Stephen Smoogen]

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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-- 
Stephen John Smoogen		smoogen at lanl.gov
Los Alamos National Labrador  CCN-5 Sched 5/40  PH: 4-0645 (note new #)
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