Diskless and per host configuration.

Linux.tar.gz · 05-07-2007, 09:32 AM

Hi there !

Here's the plan:
I want to have a PXE/NFS/DHCP... server and about ~15 diskless machines.
I need a different hostname per diskless, ie.: 01 02 03 04 etc...
That's easy with the DHCP server and MAC addresses.

Less easy is that i want a different .xinitrc and/or /etc/X11/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc for each station and maybe some other files (but i assume the work will be the same as xinitrc).
These xinitrc-per-host will be on the server.

So how can i do that ?

IsaacKuo · 05-08-2007, 10:51 AM

The easiest thing probably would be to have seperate root directories for each workstation, and then mount common directories via nfs. For example, the etc/fstab entry might look something like:

Code:

server:/shares/roots/root13   /     defaults 0 0
server:/shares/common/home    /home defaults 0 0
server:/shares/common/usr     /usr  defaults 0 0

Linux.tar.gz · 05-08-2007, 03:23 PM

But where is the per host config that i need ? The image uploaded via PXE will be the same. So i need something to distinguish station.
Something related to MAC adresses of course. I though of something dirty through the nfs exports file, specifiying different /home per IP. It will work but maybe there's something more clever.
Thanks anyway, IsaacKuo.

IsaacKuo · 05-08-2007, 03:34 PM

Oh, I thought you already knew how to configure that part (since you already know about configuring DHCP for the individual MAC addresses).

First off, here's a link to a how-to I put together for how I did things in Debian: http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...ss_Workstation

I actually need to edit that entry, since I learned a lot of stuff about what happens when you need to mix and match different architectures, kernels, and initrd's. But my wiki account doesn't seem to be working. Oh well...

Anyway, the relevant thing is setting up the /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/01-aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff files. Basically, PXE bootup will look for file names based on the MAC address. Make sure to remember the preceding "01-" and that all letters should be lowercase.

The contents of the file will be something like this:

Code:

LABEL linux
KERNEL vmlinuz-2.6.15-1-486
APPEND root=/dev/nfs initrd=initrd.img.netboot nfsroot=192.168.1.4:/mnt/hda5/yuki ip=dhcp rw

The relevant thing you'll want to customize for each workstation is nfsroot. For example, for workstation 13 you might want something like nfsroot=192.168.1.4:/shares/roots/root13

Linux.tar.gz · 05-09-2007, 02:27 AM

Thank again !! But i already knew that ! The problem isn't doing the PXE and making the stuff work.
The problem is just making some files on diskless different on each machines without doing 15 nfsroots.

I had another idea with a rc.local line "grepping" the last part of local ip and doing modifications based on this.