[H-GEN] Diskless boxes for internet access

Craig Eldershaw ce at comlab.ox.ac.uk
Fri Jan 9 12:31:19 EST 1998


>How about if the swap drive is across the network, on the server.  Actually,
>there's a question, if i do boot Linux off the network, do I need to have
>separate root, swap and usr partitions for each machine that will do so, or
>can some or all be shared?  

Most can be shared.  Certainly all of /usr (including the big X
binaries, libs and fonts).  In general Unix systems require a private
writable /etc and /tmp.  If the system was t do nothing but WWW
browsing, then you may be able to hack the standard init files to
accept a shared read-only version of virtually everything except etc
(which could still be RO, but will have to contain machine specific IP
details - I can't think how to avoid this, but it's not much in space
terms).

You won't use remote spap partitions, but rather remote swap files which
can simply be NFS mounted (hmmm...the fs with these will need to be
RW !).

>Do I just mount Netware directories as partitions on the Linux box?

Can't coment upon NetWare...unless it's NFS compatible.  But check the
Diskless mini-howto, it may comment.

>Looking at the X-term alternative, would a 486-33 suffice as the server for
>three or four X-term boxes running Netscape?  Or do I need something gruntier?

Two varients of the client-server approach can be used.  

One is to use the "server" machine as just a file store (ie providing
NFS and boot/rarp services) with all programs running upon the diskless
machines.  This requires (virtually) only disk-space on the server.  A
bit of memory will give small performance gains due to caching, and CPU
is irrelevant.  

The alternative is using the PCs as "dumb" xterminals.  ie they only
run an Xserver; NS (or whatever) is run off the server.  This
requires far less at the PC end, and a lot more at the server end.
You'll have to weigh up where you want the more costly parts (eg
memory) to be (server or client).

Incidentaly, in the DOS vs. linux debate, DOS may have the smaller
footprint, but linux will probably give a lot more flexibility for
allowing extra uses later (eg allow a different email client etc).

Cheers,
	Craig.
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