nfsroot is a package designed to help make Linux root file system images network-bootable and sharable by many clients. It was designed for the CHAOS Linux distribution (now renamed to TOSS) for clusters, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but will work with other Red Hat Enterprise Linux derived distros.
nfsroot distinguishes itself from other tools for managing diskless clusters by restricting itself to things that can be done by a package installed within the root image, e.g.:
- management of initramfs images in /boot (leveraging dracut) and pxelinux boot options
- making a shared, read-only root file system usable using selectable methods (unionfs, aufs, bind-mounts, etc)
- hook for saving kdump vmcore images to NFS
- hook for configuration management before init starts
The goal is that one can install the nfsroot RPM into a root image and presto, it becomes bootable and sharable given appropriate server configuration.
nfsroot leaves the root server configuration and configuration management within the image to your superior mental prowess. This minimalist design is intended for sites (like ours) that already have procedures and techniques in place for managing these subsystems and do not want a diskless solution to help.
netroot replaces nfsroot in TOSS 3 (RHEL 7 based)
nfsroot version 3 runs on CHAOS 5/TOSS 2 (RHEL 6 based)
nfsroot version 2 ran on CHAOS 4/TOSS 1 (RHEL 5 based)
nfsroot version 1 ran on CHAOS 3 (RHEL 4 based)