[clug] Fedora Diskless Workstation HOWTO

[Alastair D'Silva]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: linux-bounces+clug=d-silva.org at lists.samba.org 
> [mailto:linux-bounces+clug=d-silva.org at lists.samba.org] On 
> Behalf Of Leo Kliger
> Sent: Tuesday, 23 January 2007 13:50> To: CLUG List
> Subject: [clug] Fedora Diskless Workstation HOWTO
> 
> Does anyone know of any good (and relatively recent) howto's 
> on setting up diskless workstations on Fedora?

I've just set this up at work, this is what I did (from memory):

Install to a hard drive
Tar the whole lot up (root FS only) and extract it on your server
Rename /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifdown-eth (otherwise your machine
will hang on shutdown/reboot)
Install DHCP/TFTP as per one of the many tutorials on the net
Configure a kernel with CONFIG_IP_PNP & its DHCP related friend, and
probably CONFIG_NFS_ROOT (assuming you want NFS root), drop its modules into
your new root, and put the kernel in your TFTP root
(optional) Build UnionFS, and use it (either on the server or client - I did
it on  the client, which is more complicated, but it means theres less logic
on the server) to provide each client with its own writable /etc, /var, etc
Remove the / FS from /etc/fstab (otherwise things get confused), and
(optionally) configure /tmp as tmpfs
(optional) Configure iSCSI Enterprise Target
(http://iscsitarget.sourceforge.net/) and export a disk to use as swap
Install pxelinux into your TFTP root (http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php)
If you are booting Xen, you will also want to build mboot.c32 from the
syslinux package, and boot that as a preloader for the Xen & Linux kernels.

At this point, you should have a working Fedora installation.