NFS + ZFS - Base System readonly

[Daniel Feenberg]

On Sat, 18 Aug 2018, Philipp Vlassakakis wrote:

> Is there a way to have a separate passwd file for each client and not to use the one of the template?
> I want to set up independent machines with different users. (NIS is not an option)

In the FreeBSD diskless booting process, each client receives the default 
/etc overwritten by whatever files we want to differ across clients with 
client specific files. We overwrite fstab on nearly every client and 
passwd on a few.

I understand why you might want to avoid NIS. NIS was unreliable and 
undiagnosable when we used it, so we stopped using it. LDAP wasn't any 
better. It is a great relief to have an actual password file to examine.

I couldn't find any information about this process in the Handbook, but
the man page - "man diskless" or on the Web at:

    https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=diskless&sektion=8&manpath=freebsd-release-ports

does have this information, as does:

    http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/FreeBSD-diskless.html


Daniel Feenberg
NBER