Diskless client proper shutdown

thomas23 · 2006-10-29 03:26:59

Hi all !

I have recently set up a diskless station (first time, learned about pxe by the way, cool !) and everything is working perfectly. Almost... I can't do a proper shutdown.

Here is the situations :

1- The network is shut down before the nfs disk is unmount, then everything hangs at this point (no more disk, nothing to execute !)

2- The nfs share tries to get unmounted before the network is disconnected. It just tells that the network mount is busy. Back to situation one soon after...

Here is my fstab :

# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file>        <dir>         <type>    <options>          <dump> <pass>
none                   /dev/pts      devpts    defaults            0      0
none                   /dev/shm      tmpfs     defaults            0      0

/dev/hdc               /mnt/cd   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/sda1              /mnt/usb  reiserfs  user,noauto 0 0

192.168.12.4:/home/nfsboot / nfs sync,hard,intr,rw,nolock,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 0 0

I have tried to remove network from deamons but not only it only arrive to situation 1 a bit later, gnome can't load any fancy stuff after "reboot". So I guess network have to be in daemons (or what it does written somewhere else).

I guess i'm going to need some kind of temporary folder to put shutdown scripts. The only thing I have that can store data on this client computer is RAM. Perhaps a usb stick as swap eventually if 256 mb of ram is not enought.

thomas23 · 2006-10-31 02:37:44

Mmmm... No answers yet... Let's put it another way.

I need the network to activate normaly at boot but to stay up until the root is unmount during shutdown. In my opinion it would not matter to not stop the network at all during shutdown process. This way my root should stay accessible until the end of the process.

byte · 2006-10-31 03:18:50

Maybe remove 'network' from DAEMONS and start it in /etc/rc.local? But do it manually and don't use the /etc/rc.d/network script as this will be caught as well in the shutdown process before unmounting the filesystems.

It's always a good idea to look at /etc/rc.* to see how boot and shutdown is handled.

thomas23 · 2006-11-04 01:38:17

OK, finally got the time to test it, it goes further than before. The shutdown stops at the moment when the term signal (I think) is sent to everybody still running. So it probably stops the network too. I guess I will have to arrange something like live CDs. So some stuff stay in the RAM during shutdown. I anybody have an idea, please express yourself !

When I succeed in my diskless station project, I promess I will make a wiki out of this !!!

cactus · 2006-11-04 02:15:38

I never had a problem like this when i was doing diskless clients....

*scratches head*

thomas23 · 2006-11-04 02:37:58

Mmmm... *scraches head too*

Here is what I have done. I did not know how to simulate an arch install in a simple folder so I made a new base Install on a VMWare machine and copied all the files (with a Archie booted on the VM) to my nfs share.

I have also set up my dhcp server and a tftp share so the client boots with PXE. Then the kernel on the tftp share is configured to boot from the nfs share. The only file I chaged on the share is fstab (and of course added some services into rc.conf).

Did I miss something ? Is it better to boot from a CD with the kernel and grub preconfigured on it ? (My preference goes to 100% network boot)

cactus · 2006-11-04 03:13:31

I was using pxes at the time..to generate the images.
Then i had nfs mounted root, and nfs mounted swap too.
It was entirely diskless. You might take a look at pxes or ltsp..
you might just be missing something simple...

thomas23 · 2006-11-09 00:49:48

Hi all, I'm giving up on this one. Must have miss something... I did not found enough documentation on this subject (not the way I want to do it, wich is replacing the hard drive by a nfs share). Probably going to make a terminal server though, just for the fun of it ! Thanks for the help

Arch Linux

#1 2006-10-29 03:26:59

Diskless client proper shutdown

#2 2006-10-31 02:37:44

Re: Diskless client proper shutdown

#3 2006-10-31 03:18:50

Re: Diskless client proper shutdown

#4 2006-11-04 01:38:17

Re: Diskless client proper shutdown

#5 2006-11-04 02:15:38

Re: Diskless client proper shutdown

#6 2006-11-04 02:37:58

Re: Diskless client proper shutdown

#7 2006-11-04 03:13:31

Re: Diskless client proper shutdown

#8 2006-11-09 00:49:48

Re: Diskless client proper shutdown

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