Installing packages on the server
You'll need a nfs server, a dhcp server, a tftp server and pxelinux.
Assuming everything will be on the same server:
# apt-get install syslinux nfs-kernel-server tftpd-hpa
Setting up the chroot
Create the chroot with debootstrap:
# cd /opt # mkdir nfsroot # debootstrap -v testing /opt/nfsroot http://ftp.debian.org/main
Now configure the minimalistic chroot:
# cp /etc/resolv.conf /opt/nfsroot/etc/ # chroot /opt/nfsroot # apt-get update
Install a debian kernel and useful tools in the chroot
# apt-get install vim less procps passwd dhcp3-client nfsbooted
module-init-tools net-tools
Setup nfsbooted
Copy the content of /etc/nfsbooted/fstab into /etc/fstab
cat /etc/nfsbooted/fstab >> /etc/fstab
Edit it to suit your needs.
Add an entry to /etc/fstab to mount the / filesystem readonly so that nfsbooted's mountfix script can fix permissions at startup:
/ /.nfsroot none bind,ro 0 0
Create the .nfsroot dir
mkdir /.nfsroot
Configure inittab to start an xchooser
replace a tty entry in /etc/inittab by
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1 -n -l /root/xchooser
where /root/xchooser is a small script that runs X in -indirect mode on the XDMCP server:
#!/bin/sh
while true; do
X -layout `hostname` -indirect xdmserver.mydomain
dialog --yesno "shutdown `hostname` ?" 5 23
if [ $? = 0 ] ; then break; fi
done
shutdown -h now
sleep 5
Xorg configuration
Install xorg:
# apt-get install xserver-xorg xfonts-base
Configure xorg:
XXX TODO
Configure pxelinux and the kernel
tftpd comes configured to provide files from /var/lib/tftpboot on the server:
# cd /var/lib/tftpboot # # symlink won't work if you keep the default -s option from tftpd : # cp /usr/lib/syslinux/pxelinux.0 . # mkdir pxelinux.cfg
Create a pxelinux configuration : edit /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default:
LABEL netboot
kernel vmlinuz
append rw ip=all
and go read nfsroot.txt in kernel sources for more info about the parameters that could be usefully passed to the kernel.