Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2016 17:08:29 +0000 From: bugzilla-noreply@freebsd.org To: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: [Bug 213175] [handbook] Precisions/caveat for 30.8 Diskless Operation Message-ID: <bug-213175-9@https.bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/>
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https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=213175 Bug ID: 213175 Summary: [handbook] Precisions/caveat for 30.8 Diskless Operation Product: Documentation Version: Latest Hardware: Any OS: Any Status: New Severity: Affects Only Me Priority: --- Component: Documentation Assignee: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org Reporter: natbsd@instinctive.eu Hello, a few days ago I found myself exactly in the situation solved by the Handbook in chapter 30.8 "Diskless Operation with PXE". I'm as impressed as usual with the quality and efficiency of FreeBSD documentation, which made the few slightly-harder points stand out. I'm proposing to help fix these points. I think I will try to submit a patch in a few days, but there could be some helpful discussion prior to making it, so I'm submitting the bug without a patch for now. In case it matters, my situation is that I've been trying to build a silent desktop, in the idea of "NUC" or "nettops", with a fanless low-power CPU, a fanless power unit, and something other than a hard drive for the OS. It seems to get a bit hot in there though (~50°C on the cores) so I'm a bit afraid to burn my SSD, so I decided to try a diskless operation, by having the OS on a NAS in another room. I don't know yet how to deal with /home, as an unauthenticated read-write NFS makes me a bit uneasy even on a wired LAN. The first issue I encountered is in paragraph 30.8.1 "Setting Up the PXE Environment", at step 14. I installed some packages in the root served over NFS. With pkg-ng, that means updating the repository and (by default) keeping a copy of the packages. That made my /var over 130MB. Proceeding to make conf/base/var.cpio.gz, I didn't realize that /var would end-up in a 5MB mfs, which causes enough problems to prevent booting altogether. I would suggest at least mentioning conf/base/var/md_size around the end of 30.8.1 The second issue I encountered is in the same paragraph, step 3 (but it manifests after having solved the previous one. I don't know enough of NFS to be sure of what is going on, but it seems `-maproot=root` is needed to have a working system. The symptoms were weird, like the mfs still being at 5 MB (but the system boots completely), and not having the permission to run /sbin/shutdown. If I hadn't read diskless(8), which mentions `-maproot=0`, and hadn't thought it weird root not having some execute permission, I might still be scratching my head on this. Lastly, I used 10.3-RELEASE .txz archives instead of make buildworld/buildkernel/installworld/installkernel/distribution, but I'm not sure whether it's worth talking about this alternative in the handbook. Hoping this helps, Natasha -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.help
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