Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for something fairly specific. I've searched through forums and google and can't quite find what I'm looking for, so I thought maybe someone would know of something that could help.

Here's the idea. I'd like to have one main server at home that contains a PXE server, LDAP server (or something like it) as well as a file server that contains the home directory for every user in the house. When a laptop turns on it boots from the PXE server if no OS is present and installs whatever distro we decide on, then downloads the /user folder available on the file server and sets up a user for each folder.

When you take leave with your laptop that day it acts like a normal linux install throughout the day. When you get back home the only special thing is that it compares the home directories for each user and, depending on time stamp, updates the main server to mirror whatever has happened most recently. While the laptop is at home it continues to do this hourly.

I'd also like to include updates in this somehow. Some of the solutions I found in this thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-tools-914700/

Will work, setting the home directory to backup to the server shouldn't be too difficult. I'm not sure about the user accounts but it seems like if I dig into it I can figure it out. What I'm not sure about is how to set up the PXE server correctly. I don't really want it to run an install every time. Ideally it would turn on, check the files, update any out-dated packages (I would hopefully run updates on the server and it would just match that), then boot up normally. I'm not even sure if this is possible though. Is anyone aware of a a set up that could work like this? Any tools I should look into in order to build it myself? Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Josh

I think you're expecting a liitle too much from PXE, but addressing all your points ..

- PXE server: cobbler is my current favourite but there other options.
- home dir backup/sync: cron job running rsync, may be better to use the server as a backup location for snapshots rather than just a mirror (if you delete a file locally it will get deleted from the server), there are a few rsync/snapshotting tools available.
- auto-install if no OS is present: just make sure the boot order has PXE last, this is dangerous however (think visitors getting their laptop OS installation blown away).
- updates prior to boot: unlikely, just allow regular update checks to local server after boot.
- laptop operates normally away from home: sssd will cache credentials and allow ldap/centralised accounts to log on when the server is unavailable

There are many ways to skin a cat and linux is a swiss army knife ...

Thanks so much for the reply! You're right that I'm probably expecting too much from a PXE. I was hoping I could get some sort of automated updates set up, but just having it run an update in the background every once in a while isn't a bad idea.

I'll definitely look in to cobbler, rsync and sssd. Good point about a visitor's laptop getting blown away as well. I was going to set up an automated install that hopefully wouldn't require any user interaction, but throwing a confirmation dialog on there would definitely be a good idea. Thanks again for pointing out those options.

I put a password on the install items in the cobbler PXE menu to prevent "accidents" but anybody can select local boot.