Diskless Nodes on Gentoo
drasnor
Starship OperatorHawthorne, CA Icrontian
I'm having some trouble with getting diskless nodes on Gentoo to work properly. I started with the official documentation on the subject but the client nodes aren't behaving properly. They boot successfully over the LAN but don't function as normal machines.
From what I can tell, the clients are attempting to mount the server's /usr, /home, and /opt to their filesystems in read only mode. In effect, portage doesn't work and I can't install software just for the clients without messing with my server configuration (bad). Also, the guide had me carbon-copy my server's /etc to the clients which resulted in some wierd errors during boot.
Right now I'm installing a Gentoo base system to another directory on my server's hard drive and am going to export it via NFS. Each of the clients has their own root filesystem in other folders on the server. I want to only have one copy of the large things (/usr, /bin, /sbin) and each client have their own /etc, /var, /home, /opt. I want to be able to use portage to update the clients. From what I see, there are three solutions:
1) Symlink /usr, /bin, /sbin from the shared root filesystem to each client filesystem on the server side. Each client has R/W access to the shared binary directories at all times. Also symlink nearly all files in /etc except the ones that are host-specific (e.g. /etc/conf.d/hostname)
2) Export and NFS mount /usr on each client filesystem in their fstab in R/W mode, clone /bin and /sbin to the client filesystems, and maintain a unique /etc on each client. This can be a problem when clients attempt to update since the binaries will get changed but only the configuration files on one client get updated.
3) Export and NFS mount /usr on each client filesystem in read-only mode, clone /bin and /sbin to the client filesystems, and maintain a unique /etc on each client. This is most similar to the guide, but I would have to chroot into the shared client filesystem on the server to update it.
Any other ideas or suggestions?
-drasnor
From what I can tell, the clients are attempting to mount the server's /usr, /home, and /opt to their filesystems in read only mode. In effect, portage doesn't work and I can't install software just for the clients without messing with my server configuration (bad). Also, the guide had me carbon-copy my server's /etc to the clients which resulted in some wierd errors during boot.
Right now I'm installing a Gentoo base system to another directory on my server's hard drive and am going to export it via NFS. Each of the clients has their own root filesystem in other folders on the server. I want to only have one copy of the large things (/usr, /bin, /sbin) and each client have their own /etc, /var, /home, /opt. I want to be able to use portage to update the clients. From what I see, there are three solutions:
1) Symlink /usr, /bin, /sbin from the shared root filesystem to each client filesystem on the server side. Each client has R/W access to the shared binary directories at all times. Also symlink nearly all files in /etc except the ones that are host-specific (e.g. /etc/conf.d/hostname)
2) Export and NFS mount /usr on each client filesystem in their fstab in R/W mode, clone /bin and /sbin to the client filesystems, and maintain a unique /etc on each client. This can be a problem when clients attempt to update since the binaries will get changed but only the configuration files on one client get updated.
3) Export and NFS mount /usr on each client filesystem in read-only mode, clone /bin and /sbin to the client filesystems, and maintain a unique /etc on each client. This is most similar to the guide, but I would have to chroot into the shared client filesystem on the server to update it.
Any other ideas or suggestions?
-drasnor
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-drasnor