Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 09:57:15 -0800 From: Brooks Davis <brooks@one-eyed-alien.net> To: Jean-Francois Dockes <jean-francois.dockes@wanadoo.fr> Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Updated 'diskless operation' section for the handbook Message-ID: <20040212175715.GB5409@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> In-Reply-To: <16427.42887.937002.129489@hautmedoc.dockes.com> References: <16427.42887.937002.129489@hautmedoc.dockes.com>
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--p4qYPpj5QlsIQJ0K Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Feb 12, 2004 at 05:19:19PM +0100, Jean-Francois Dockes wrote: > I have updated my update of the 'diskless operation' section. >=20 > I have included information specific to FreeBSD 5.x, and more details abo= ut > using PXE. >=20 > Some of the information is supposedly more accurate because I have taken > more time to investigate how some of the mechanisms actually work. >=20 > On a related note, I think that PR docs/62412 should be closed as it is > mostly wrong AFAIK. I have tested every method described in the section, > both with release 4.9 and 5.2, and everything works as advertised (at lea= st > on my test machines which have fairly common hardware, both quite old and > quite new). There were a few glitches in the previous version of the > section, but no real show-stopper either. >=20 > I'd be very glad to welcome your corrections, and hope that the new versi= on > can be included in the handbook. Overall, I like the changes. Explaining the reasons behind various is a nice addition. You should provide a unified diff of the changes as that is the project standard. Some comments: - In the DHCP+PXE configuration, why do you use "pxeboot" as the path when normal roots have "boot/pxeboot" installed by default? It's even on the release CDs, which is really handy for installing on new servers that don't have removable media. - You might or might not want to mention that with PXE boot you can leave off the host's IP in option root-path as long as you don't enable the kernel option BOOTP (I'll be fixing that limitation shortly.) - On current /etc/defaults/make.conf became /usr/share/examples/etc/make.conf. - You might want to talk about pxeboot's other make options, BOOT_PXELDR_PROBE_KEYBOARD and BOOT_PXELDR_ALWAYS_SERIAL. - If you need to set nfs_server_enable in rc.conf, you won't generally have a mountd to kill -HUP. I've generally found that unreliable anyway so I usually just give up and reboot. - The way the clone_root script makes /usr seperate is a minor annoyance for a couple of reasons. First, if you let the diskless kernel get out of sync, there are binaries in /usr that may break such as netstat. Second, the script that populats /usr doesn't work without /usr. - The refrences to /etc/rc.diskless[12] are somewhat obsolete in 5.x since they have been replaced by /etc/rc.d/initdiskless and /etc/rc.d/diskless. I'm planning to complicate matters further by removing diskless and replacing it with several scripts that handle its various functions. You may want to leave the refrences as is for now. - I'd say running MAKEDEV is pointless or unnecessicary rather then useless on 5.x. Thanks for doing this. -- Brooks --=20 Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE. PGP fingerprint 655D 519C 26A7 82E7 2529 9BF0 5D8E 8BE9 F238 1AD4 --p4qYPpj5QlsIQJ0K Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAK75rXY6L6fI4GtQRAo3kAKDapXUBtC98h4ldhdBaDx+BoCu7bwCg4hIf 7O0u8roDf0WD6OQIXWjP3yU= =PUXq -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --p4qYPpj5QlsIQJ0K--
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