I'm trying to setup Slackware as a server for diskless clients with NFS root. I'm aware of the LTSP and DRBL projects - but they seem to be quite distribution specific. I would like to turn Slackware into a server for diskless clients using rather more standard tools - so that I can apply the procedure to other distros - if necessary - but mainly so that I can use Slackware :-) for it.

I've followed the various online howtos and I've setup pxelinux, tftp, dhcp and nfs - and it all seems to work fine - sort of :-).

The stumbling block is the initrd - which in Slackware (and maybe elsewhere?) doesn't have support for dhcp - and it doesn't seem to be possible to create an initrd image using mkinitrd which includes dhcp support. Thus the client machine boots, loads the kernel, hands over to initrd, which loads the NIC driver and does whatever else it does - but when trying to mount the NFS share for the root partition - it fails as there is no network/IP setup.

Has anybody managed to set Slackware up as a server for diskless clients? Maybe by hacking the initrd image included with the Slackware CD-rom and making their own custom scripts for network support? Any other ideas?

From looking around on the Internet, I have to conclude that diskless clients are not exactly popular with Linux nowadays - outside of the LTSP and DRBL projects. Am I wrong?

I have not tried this myself, but from /usr/lib/setup/SeTnet in the Slackware installer

That's unreated to this question. The Slackware installer has network support of course. The OP's question was how to add network support to the initrd which you create after installation, using mkinitrd.

Eric

Yes - that's correct - I was trying to use the standard mkinitrd to get nfs root working in Slackware. I think I would also need udev support in initrd - as I tried hacking the init script and it couldn't find the network device to use it for dhcp (although the kernel module was loaded) - probably because udev didn't create the device under /proc/net/dev (there is nothing there). I've tried using the udev option in /etc/mkinitrd.conf - but still didn't make a difference.

I didn't realise that nfs root booting, and diskless setups in general are such a non-standard affair. Although there seem to be a myriad of ways and tools to do it - aside from LTSP and DRBL - there is little in the way of minimally modifying a standard distro to make it work in a diskless setup.