I made a post in the Fedora list that didn't yield much help regarding this. I need to use a CentOS5.1 server to remotely boot a few Fedora 9 workstations. I have the option of using straight PXE, or even reflashing gPXE to the LOM for the clients. What I am interested in knowing is the best approach to this.
1. Should I just do iSCSI backed diskless setups? Probably doesn't scale well. 2. I looked at ltsp, but I can't present a fc9 environment with a RH5.1 server?
The workstations would be fairly stateless, I intended on redirecting home dirs to a persistent share that gets backed up.
Any ideas I can look into would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks, jlc
- Should I just do iSCSI backed diskless setups? Probably doesn't scale well.
What's wrong with NFS? You can even have root on NFS these days A quick google found: http://www.digitalpeer.com/id/linuxnfs
My first thought: Install a workstation as normal, then tar/untar them onto the NFS server. With some correct seperation of files you should be able to share most of the filesystem between machines (eg /usr could be readonly). You might even be able to make root readonly, but I've never tried that.
What's wrong with NFS? You can even have root on NFS these days A quick google found: http://www.digitalpeer.com/id/linuxnfs
Nothing actually, just no experience with it. What is the performance like of NFS? Given good hardware, does this make for a production quality setup? Thanks! jlc
On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 03:47:04PM -0600, Joseph L. Casale wrote:
What's wrong with NFS? You can even have root on NFS these days A quick google found: http://www.digitalpeer.com/id/linuxnfs
Nothing actually, just no experience with it. What is the performance like of NFS? Given good hardware, does this make for a production quality setup?
NFS is the traditional diskless workstation method, as used by Sun for the past 2 or 3 decades. The efficacy of it is very dependent on what you're doing. Web browsing, reading email, running the odd program; people won't notice. High I/O intensive applications... not suited for diskless in the first place! The key is mostly sufficient memory so that the machine doesn't swap and can keep commonly accessed programs in I/O cache.
On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 08:17:20PM -0600, Joseph L. Casale wrote:
The key is mostly sufficient memory so that the machine doesn't swap and can keep commonly accessed programs in I/O cache.
If the clients had lots of ram (>=2Gb), can I disable the swap file altogether?
Yup! (That's also true for diskful machines).
Something just occured to me on this this...
Suppose I have an old Amd 486DX2/40, could this oldie be setup so that it boots a minimal (blocky) GUI over NFS to be able to run xmms or something like that? Has anybody tried (something similar like) this?
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Harris Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 4:05 AM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] Booting Diskless Workstations
On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 03:47:04PM -0600, Joseph L. Casale wrote:
What's wrong with NFS? You can even have root on NFS these days A quick google found: http://www.digitalpeer.com/id/linuxnfs
Nothing actually, just no experience with it. What is the performance like
of NFS?
Given good hardware, does this make for a production quality setup?
NFS is the traditional diskless workstation method, as used by Sun for the past 2 or 3 decades. The efficacy of it is very dependent on what you're doing. Web browsing, reading email, running the odd program; people won't notice. High I/O intensive applications... not suited for diskless in the first place! The key is mostly sufficient memory so that the machine doesn't swap and can keep commonly accessed programs in I/O cache.
Sorin Srbu wrote:
Something just occured to me on this this...
Suppose I have an old Amd 486DX2/40, could this oldie be setup so that it boots a minimal (blocky) GUI over NFS to be able to run xmms or something like that? Has anybody tried (something similar like) this?
how much ram? I don't think I'd bother if its less than about 128MB.
fwiw, a newer distro with a i686 only kernel won't work, that requires pentium pro or better
John R Pierce <> scribbled on Tuesday, June 03, 2008 9:40 AM:
Sorin Srbu wrote:
Something just occured to me on this this...
Suppose I have an old Amd 486DX2/40, could this oldie be setup so that it boots a minimal (blocky) GUI over NFS to be able to run xmms or something like that? Has anybody tried (something similar like) this?
how much ram? I don't think I'd bother if its less than about 128MB.
Probably around 30ish. Don't think the 486-generation machines could handle much more than that.
fwiw, a newer distro with a i686 only kernel won't work, that requires pentium pro or better
Sounds good! I have a Ppro/180 (overclocked to 200MHz) too.
What about players? Xmmx is graphical and I'm not familiar with CLI or block-graphics players others than those that were big with OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 more than a decade ago.
TIA.
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