[TUHS] RFS was: Re: UNIX of choice these days?

[Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri]

On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 10:46:16AM -0600, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 09/29/2017 02:59 AM, Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri wrote:
> > My main work setup today is actually a diskless (X11-less) OpenBSD
> > system.  It's just something I set up in a VM environment to learn how
> > to do it (I'm on a work laptop running Windows 10, as I need Windows for
> > some few work-related tasks), but it works just fine and I have no
> > reason to change it.  For one thing, it makes backups easier as they can
> > run locally on the server.
> 
> I think you're the first person that I've seen say "I am" and not "I used
> to" regarding diskless.
> 
> Can I ask for a high level overview of your config?
> 
> I am guessing dhcp and / or bootp, combined with tftp for kernel image, and
> NFS for root.

Nothing fancy.  OpenBSD's dhcpd on a server tells the client to pick up
pxeboot (2nd stage bootstrap) tftp from my file server. pxeboot then
loads the kernel over tftp.  The bootparamd daemon on the fileserver
provides info to the client regarding its root directory and swap file,
and the client mounts these over NFS.

It follows http://man.openbsd.org/diskless closely.



-- 
Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri,
National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden (NBIS),
Uppsala University, Sweden.