Share "/" to multiple clients via NFS, any hope?

kokoko3k · 2013-10-30 13:37:33

Hi all,
I manage a school lab with 50 clients and till now i used a central Debian server with kde3 plus freenx to share the desktop to the workstations.
All worked really well and incredibly fast, considering the users would just edit text files/compile them and browse the internet.

No (due to teachers request) we're considering to give them a "real" installation to work on.
We could certanly install a linux distro to every client or setup virtual machines (clients runs XP by the local disk),

but i'm considering the alternative to share a single ARCH installation via NFS to them, and i'm not talking about squashfs files decompressed in ram (clients are really low on it),

-> I'd like to share "/" to multiple clients via NFS <-

PXE stuff and network boot aren't an issue, and are already working fine.

Now, even if the users will not be root/nor have any superuser right, my concerns are about the filesystem sharing and what could happen if several kernels (and systemds!) will use the same files.

Is there any hope this could work, or could work with some magic,
or maybe some alternative i not considered?

Thanks.

Last edited by kokoko3k (2013-10-30 13:44:51)

cris9288 · 2013-10-30 13:44:03

Maybe I'm not understanding this right, but if you want to share a single installation among a number of clients then there should only be one running kernel and one running instance of sytemd right? The students will all be working out of their own home directories which will be exported through NFS.

kokoko3k · 2013-10-30 13:50:36

I don't want to export just homes, but every file under "/"
So the PXE server would just host an arch installation, and every client would do a network boot and mount "/" as soon as possible.
Clearly every client would run a linux kernel and a systemd process and all of them would concurrently access the files hosted on the server.
This will probably (well, almost certanly) lead to unexpected issues, so i'm asking if there is a way to circumvent/prevent/bypass them or to have the same functionalities by using other methods.

The pros of that solution are at least that:
-every update performed to the central server is automatically available to every client
-no need to install anything to the clients

Last edited by kokoko3k (2013-10-30 13:51:22)

jasonwryan · 2013-10-30 16:24:31

Why bother with NFS at all; just have them all log in via SSH.

Not an Installation issue, moving to Networking...

alphaniner · 2013-10-30 17:06:03

You'd probably run into issues with /var if you didn't plan ahead. I would configure clients to mount a tmpfs at /var/log for example, and any other directories which are written to during operation. I think you'd also need to make sure no two clients had the same user logged on. I've run a standard arch install with everything but /home and /var mounted read only, so I suppose those are the only locations you'd need to worry about.

kokoko3k · 2013-10-31 06:40:29

Thanks,

@jasonwryan:
ssh/nx access with the central server doing all of the work was my previous setup, the teacher asked for something else.

@alphaniner:
Is Interesting that you was able to run a arch with just /var being RW; i guess i've to figure out if there is something else that would need to be writable and hope that the little ram installed on the client will be enough for tmpfs.

(Seems nbd with copy on write would come handy too)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-10-30 13:37:33

Share "/" to multiple clients via NFS, any hope?

#2 2013-10-30 13:44:03

Re: Share "/" to multiple clients via NFS, any hope?

#3 2013-10-30 13:50:36

Re: Share "/" to multiple clients via NFS, any hope?

#4 2013-10-30 16:24:31

Re: Share "/" to multiple clients via NFS, any hope?

#5 2013-10-30 17:06:03

Re: Share "/" to multiple clients via NFS, any hope?

#6 2013-10-31 06:40:29

Re: Share "/" to multiple clients via NFS, any hope?

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