From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 5034 invoked by uid 1002); 7 Jan 2003 17:42:57 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gentoo-dev-help@gentoo.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Received: (qmail 9756 invoked from network); 7 Jan 2003 17:42:56 -0000 Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 21:38:22 +0200 From: Martin Schlemmer To: "Kevin N. Carpenter" Cc: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Message-Id: <20030107213822.68fd0bd0.azarah@gentoo.org> In-Reply-To: <3E1A4D6B.5010809@seaplace.org> References: <3E1A4D6B.5010809@seaplace.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.8.8claws (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg="pgp-sha1"; boundary="dzZnmig=.4hLahc9" Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Diskless Gentoo ndoes X-Archives-Salt: f734c0a7-88ad-4b9f-bccc-2f1a4d678247 X-Archives-Hash: 38998f187ec43a7ad1b97712a81a6134 --dzZnmig=.4hLahc9 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Mon, 06 Jan 2003 21:45:47 -0600 "Kevin N. Carpenter" wrote: > I'm working on setting up a CPU farm of diskless Gentoo based Linux > nodes. I'm using DHCPD to supply each machine with a unique > root-path, host-name, and fixed-address. > Again, you can try the Adelie Linux for SSI clusters: http://www.cerca.umontreal.ca/hpc/en/projects/adelie/index.html which do have support. > I've done this in the past, using a shared /usr subtree and a small > dedicated root subtree. Previously, all that was needed was a unique > hostname and an entry in /etc/fstab referencing the root drive. > > I'm trying to eliminate the need for those unique entries in the root > space. This will allow me greatly simplified support of the farm, > since Rsync could easily be used to resync all the remote root areas > from a common build area. Without the elimination, editing of > /etc/hostname and /etc/fstab is required after any syncronization with > the master image. > > /etc/hostname seemed easy. The '-H' option specified for dhcpcd in > /etc/conf.d/net is documented to accept the passed host-name from the > DHCP server. I presumed a 'rc-update del hostname boot' would > eliminate that script from at least complaining, and potentially from > overriding dhcpcd's effort to create /etc/hostname. I see that > /etc/runlevels/boot/modules depends on hostname - fortunetly my > diskless > kernel is compiled without modules, so I've eliminated that as well. > Well, we could (or rather your :P) try to get /etc/init.d/hostname to work with dhcpcd in setting the hostname. I am willing to add changes if it will work seamlessly with a non dhcpcd box .... > Root is a differnet issue. I can see from my logs that the diskless > machine mounts its proper root filesystem from the server. After a > diskless boot, a mount command shows root mounted from the right > location, but has it mounted rsize=4096,wsize=4096,ro. The "ro" is a > killer. > > The only solution I've spotted (reading > /usr/src/linux/Doc*/nfsroot.txt) is to specify a nfsroot= parameter on > the kernel command line. Testing with this showed initial promise, as > demonstrated by changing the default rsize and wsize to 8192. > However, the read-only status remains unchange, despite specifing an > "rw" option on the nfsroot= line. > Once again, have a look at how the guys of the Adelie project does it. > The only thing that appears to work is to specify a proper unique > entry in /etc/fstab. That, however, violates my design goal. > > Any suggestions? > > One note that spawned me to write this tomb to the -dev list is > something that doesn't seem quite right to me. /etc/init.d/checkroot > doesn't handle an nfs root file system well. Said script forces a > "fsck -a /", which fails for an nfs mounted root filesystem. I > wouldn't be opposed to simply "rc-update del checkroot boot" to get > around that, but > checkroot does more than just check the root file system. It also > mounts /proc, cleans up /etc/mtab, handles devfs, etc. Seems to me > that functionality should be split into a seperate script. > Not exactly ... It just populate /etc/mtab after / is mounted rw. The actual script that handles devfs, etc, are /sbin/rc ... Once again, I have a limited amount of pc 'resources' and do not use NFS myself. I am however prepared to add a *tested* fix to disable checking for a NFS rootfs. We could get it to also mount it rw if its NFS if you are willing to spent time .... Regards, -- Martin Schlemmer Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop/System Team Developer Cape Town, South Africa --dzZnmig=.4hLahc9 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+GyyuqburzKaJYLYRAs36AJ0eETy+kDHdhswTv2ZTXDBMg5u1YQCgjxDT /MH+ATL5PbEN3p9PYVq6ECU= =FUd9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --dzZnmig=.4hLahc9--