Thin Client: New User Guide

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>