[resolved] mounting / via nfs ?

thorpe · Last edited by thorpe on Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:33 pm; edited 1 time in total

Im not real sure on the Subject here, but I'll try and describe what I want to do. Hoping someone could then point me to a guide on the subject.

I have a small home network (4 pc) setup including my gf's pc which runs windows. What I would like to do is make her machine be able to boot Gentoo (maybe using a liveCD) and mount a root file system via nfs.

One of my machine's already has nfsd running and has a spare partition I would like to use as the root for her system.

See what Im getting at? Basically, I want to use her machine (but not her harddrive) to run a version of Gentoo mounted via nfs, hosted on a spare partition on one of my machines.

Im sure this can be done, just not sure what its called. Any ideas what this is called? Any guides?

Thanks.
_________________
Research before taking any advice from me. I'm still coming to grips with this myself.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 2:02 pm Post subject:

thorpe,

What you want to do is called netbooting. If your gfs PC has a net boot BIOS option, its easy.
Follow the Terminal Server guide. If the BIOS does not support network booting, you can use a boot floppy (or CD) to achieve the same thing.

Be sure that the netbooted PC has enough RAM to avoid swapping. Network swapping is seriously slow.
The Diskless Guide and the Terminal Server will be good places to start.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

thorpe · Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 2:05 pm Post subject:

Thanks NeddySeagoon. I had actually been reading over the diskless guide, and yeah it seems very close to what I want. Guess I just need to have a closer read.

I'll see how I go and get back if I have some more specific questions.
_________________
Research before taking any advice from me. I'm still coming to grips with this myself.