Diskless workstations

[Daniel J Walsh]

Chuck Wolber wrote:

>  
>
>>I have been working on a package called redhat-config-netboot that
>>allows you to setup diskless environments using NFS, as well as network
>>installations.  It is based somewhat off of LTSB.  It is basically a
>>series of scripts and python code that sets up a PXE boot environment
>>and an diskless NFS partition.
>>
>>ftp://people.redhat.com/dwalsh/netboot
>>
>>Comments welcome.
>>    
>>
>
>Pretty intuitive and straightforward approach. If I read your README
>correctly, it looks as if you install an OS on a machine that will be a
>similar configuration to the diskless machines and then upload that image
>at boot time to the diskless clients.
>
>My only comment so far is, why are you locking things down by MAC address?  
>Wouldn't end user authentication be a more appropriate method (RFID is
>what comes to mind, but PAM is a good abstraction model)? It seems like
>you're really marrying the hardware to the software in several ways.  Why
>can't I boot from a floppy and load my workstation image onto my laptop
>(which happens to have 1GB of RAM) if I'm in a meeting "down the hall"  
>without having to update a dhcpd.conf file.
>
>-Chuck
>
>
>  
>
I am locking the system to an IP Address, nothing more.   The reason for 
this is so that the machine boots the same
every time, unless the sysadmin changes the boot configuration file (PXE 
File).  This way there is consistancy between boots, like there would be 
in a diskfull system.  The client uses the IP Address to find the system 
specific data on the server.  I can't use the authentication because 
there is no gaurantee that anyone is even going to be logging into the 
machine (think blade servers).   Also a lot of the system specific 
information is required long before the login prompt happens.  

One interesting point that people keep bringing up is the idea of having 
the entire operating system in RAM instead of using NFS.  In this 
situation you would get a completely fresh machine on every reboot, ie 
there would be nothing  retained between boots.  Might be an interesting 
experiment to try.