One last netbooting issue

[Lincoln Peters]

>From: ME <dugan at passwall.com>
>Reply-To: <talk at nblug.org>
>To: talk at nblug.org
>Subject: Re: One last netbooting issue
>Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 16:15:46 -0700 (PDT)
>
>If you have control over the boot floppy, try using the netboot stuff and
>give an explicit arg for where to find the root, but allow it to grab an
>IP via their DHCP server.

The boot floppy is set up with the kernel parameters:
root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=130.157.139.237:/netboot ip=dhcp

I would think that that would do it.

>
>Then you provide your kernel with a netboot modification to work with the
>netboot stuff, set it on the server mentioned explcitily from the disk,
>and then it dl the modified kernel and hands the kernel the IP addressit
>should use. The client then has no absolute need for DHCP. Of course, if
>the DHCP Server should try to change the lease on-the-fly and then do
>something to revoke the license and hand it to some other machine, then
>you could have problems....

Hmmm.  I don't have control of the DHCP server, so I can't be sure whether 
or not it'll try any on-the-fly stuff.
If the kernel itself is auto-configuring the network as described above, 
should it even need dhcpcd to be running?

>
>I do not recall right now, but I dont think ours use DHCP. But even if
>they did, the NFS mount is exported from the server as readOnly so there
>is notstate. The shutdown (desired) for these NC is to just shut them
>off! (Not state, noit disk corruption because no write acccess! :-)

I can't get away with read-only access.  Imagine someone spending a class 
period writing up something in AbiWord or KWord, and then getting a 
"read-only filesystem" error when he or she clicks on "Save"!


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