NFS/diskless: mount/unmount problems

[Erik Norgaard]

Hi,

I am trying to setup diskless workstations. I have got to the point 
where I can boot up the workstations, the nfs_root is mounted correctly 
read only.

I have two problems with NFS:

1) The problem is mounting /var rw. I want to use an nfs mount to let 
data be persistent and since I don't have too much ram. If I nfs mount 
/var I get the following error: "unable to update /var/db/mounttab"

This happens because mount tries to update the file before mounting the 
filesystem, and hence tries to write to the file on the root partition 
which is read-only.

Mounting root in rw would probably remove the error, but it's not the 
desireable solution since mounttab become unavailable after the mount, 
and it adds the risk of inconsistencies on the root share.

How, do I correct this error? Should I simply ignore? After the mount, 
things seems to work ok.

2) After mounting the /var and /home, I try to start up X. So far little 
luck, I need to configure X, but that's another story. The problem is on 
shutdown, the client fails to sync the disks before unmounting the 
nfs-partitions, it prints a secuence of non-zero digits untill giving 
up. I don't know if this too can be silently ignored.

Thanks, Erik

-- 
Ph: +34.666334818                                  web: www.locolomo.org
S/MIME Certificate: http://www.locolomo.org/crt/2004071206.crt
Subject ID:  A9:76:7A:ED:06:95:2B:8D:48:97:CE:F2:3F:42:C8:F2:22:DE:4C:B9
Fingerprint: 4A:E8:63:38:46:F6:9A:5D:B4:DC:29:41:3F:62:D3:0A:73:25:67:C2