Re: Sharing NFS file system (making it read only)

[Matthew Hoskins <mhoskins@microdsi.net>]

Dvir Oren wrote:
> I want to share the same file system for all of my
> etherboot clients.
>  I realize that some parts have to be different, and I intend
> to create
> ramdisks for them, and mount them.
>  
Tada! :) hehe you think like me.  That is exactly what i did. 
/ and /usr we mounted nfs RO, and /home was RW.  During rc.sysinit
i copied the ro version of /var into a newly e2fsck'd  /dev/ram0 then
mounted it over /var.  was very tiny.

 
However, if I make the NFS file system read only, I come across a
lot of problems:

1.  I need /dev to be rw.
 

I never ran into that problem, i created links out of dev into the
rw /var, for progs that need fifos n stuff (like syslogd). and used a remote
syslog to be the receptor for all system logs.
 
> 2.  I can't have /etc/passwd (and the related
> files) read only, if I
> want to add users, etc.  I can't have them link to somewhere else,
> passwd claims that it can't lock them.
>  
Why? #1 all my passwd files were the same bare minimum and i used NIS for
"real" users, but even if you needed to have real users in the passwd file
they can all be created from one  central location (wherever "/etc"
is available rw, like the fileserver)..
>  
> Has anybody succeeded in making the file system read only?  I'm
> finding it extremely difficult.
>  
Yep, me. i've used it for workstations and for MPI/PVM clusters.

 
Hopefully this isn't entirely off topic.

---------------
Dvir Oren
<dviro@hotpop.com>
<http://thor.prohosting.com/~dviro>

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