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Date:      Mon, 13 Aug 2001 08:54:56 -0400
From:      Michael Sinz <msinz@wgate.com>
To:        Danny Braniss <danny@cs.huji.ac.il>
Cc:        Luigi Rizzo <luigi@info.iet.unipi.it>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: diskless
Message-ID:  <3B77CE20.C81A0005@wgate.com>
References:  <E15WEr3-0003Sy-00@sexta.cs.huji.ac.il>

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Danny Braniss wrote:
> 
> > not sure, i think i tried this at some point and had problems with
> > bugs in the implementation of mount_union.  If it works for you
> > then i guess it is not problematic.  One thing you cannot do with
> > the above is delete files which are in the lower filesystem (not
> > that the current rc.diskless1 does, but in principle you might want
> > to do this).
> >
> 
> so far rc.diskless1 only populates, so removing is not a problem.
> 
> > the solution currently in rc.diskless1 actually does a merge of
> > 2-3 different filesystems, so between the mounts you have to populate
> > /conf/etc as well.
> 
> that's why im using /etc and not /conf/etc, it was becoming to complicated
> having
> more than one /etc. the nice thing is that i can use the same root for non
> diskless
> too.

We have done the same thing here with our large diskless clusters.
I really hated not having the same / (root fs) on the server and diskless
clients since it made things like updates that much harder.  So, we
built it such that / is the same on all (and read-only on the diskless
crew)  We then build a /dev (from mfs with MAKEDEV) and /var (using
mtree) and /etc (using the current /etc and /comf/default/etc)
(Too bad devfs is not running reliably - the Linux clusters save a some
RAM and boot time using that)

This whole set up means that if I install a port on the server, all of
the clients get it.  If I do a make world/etc for the OS, all of the clients
get it.  (Albeit we have to patch the rc.diskless* again to put back our
changes)  But it really works very well and saves us lots of grief in
configuration and maintainance.

-- 
Michael Sinz ---- Worldgate Communications ---- msinz@wgate.com
A master's secrets are only as good as
	the master's ability to explain them to others.

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