Home Page Home Page
 Home | Linux Administration | Corporate Services | Resources | About Us Support Center
Monthly Server Management One-time Server Services Other Services
Network Administration Network Monitoring Network Security High Availability Load Balancing Data Backup and Recovery
Linux HOWTOs Linux Guides Linux Articles New RFCs Vulnerability list Linux Journal
Testimonials Partners Careers Contact Us Site Map
Thin Client: New User Guide: Network files system Next Previous Contents

5. Network files system

The Client requests to mount /tftpboot/<IP address of client> as its / by NFS from server. You must export this from the server,(maybe symlink to /tftpboot/client to be safe.)

NFS is a big topic there is a HOWTO and two mini Howto's.

first you need to create a copy of your current system under /tftpboot ken has written two scripts that do all your work, I called them makefirst and makecopy. my first client takes 20-30mb and the copy less. I used du -h to look for large unnecesary files.

see etherboot-4.2/doc/html/diskless-5.html

the following seem to me to be the critical files here

5.1 server specific


#/etc/exports
/tftpboot/elite             elite(rw,no_root_squash)
/tftpboot/elite             gordon(rw,no_root_squash)
/usr                        *.gundog.net(ro)
/home                       *.gundog.net(rw)
/mnt/cdrom                  (ro)

run exportfs -a  to reread the exports file after
changes /usr/sbin/exportfs --help


#/etc/sysconfig/network
NETWORKING=yes
FORWARD_IPV4="no"
HOSTNAME="snoball"         <-----------
GATEWAYDEV=""
GATEWAY=""


#/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
IPADDR="192.168.53.1"            <-----------
BOOTPROTO=none

5.2 client specific


#tftpboot/elite/etc/fstab
snoball:/tftpboot/elite    /               nfs rw  1 1
none                    /proc proc          defaults   0 0
snoball:/usr           /usr                 nfs     ro  1 1
snoball:/home          /home                nfs     rw  1 1


#tftpboot/elite/etc/sysconfig/network
NETWORKING=yes
FORWARD_IPV4=nomore
HOSTNAME=elite
GATEWAYDEV=
GATEWAY="192.168.53.1"       <-----------


#/tftpboot/elite/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
DEVICE=eth0
USERCTL=yes
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
BROADCAST=192.168.53.255
NETWORK=192.168.53.0
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
IPADDR=192.168.53.23         <-----------

#odd fiddles #itemize> #item>fast... #item>cp /usr/bin/xargs /tftpboot/client/bin/xargs #/itemize>


Next Previous Contents