DISKLESS UBUNTU with squashfs?

[Mario Spinthiras]

You can use the live hooks for the initramfs package you will use to bring
up the initial ram disk. It accepts parameters in the preexecution such as
fetch=http://bla.com/filesystem.squashfs.

I don't have an article handy, but you can do it the same way the gparted
live pxe does it.

The concept is to bring up the initial ramdisk and the kernel, then it
fetches the squash image and loopmounts it.

Hope this helps,
Maz

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Tomoki Taniguchi <
tomoki.taniguchi at gmail.com> wrote:

> I want to setup a lab full of diskless workstations for my company.
> I have been reading the diskless ubuntu howto on page.
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DisklessUbuntuHowto
> but this setup uses NFS as the root file system which makes me a
> little concerned...
> what happens if the workstation loses it's connection to the NFS?
> wouldn't the workstation crash?
>
> I have been trying to find a alternate method of providing the rootfs
> to the diskless workstation when i came across something promising.
> in the howto on setting up diskless mythbuntu clients.
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/Hardy/Diskless
> "Clients will boot from a read-only compressed file system (squashfs)
> which is shared out by the server via nbd (network block device). A
> writeable overlay directory is put on top of the squashfs using aufs
> ("another unionfs"). The overlay directory is a NFS share exported by
> the server. Any changes you make on the client are stored in that NFS
> share and are available across reboots. The client can identify its
> overlay directory using the MAC address of the network card which was
> used to boot the system. "
> This sounds exactly like what i want to setup, except it being a
> mythbuntu client...
>
> anyone figure out how to do this for an ubuntu desktop?
>
> TIA,
> Tomoki
>
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