In the February 13, 2006 version of "Diskless Nodes with Gentoo", at the beginning of the section "Initialisation scripts", it is explained that a file named fastboot should be created in the root file system of the diskless node. This file affects the execution of the checkroot script. This file is no longer needed. The checkroot script uses a bash function named "is_net_fs" (it is defined in /etc/init.d/functions.sh) to detect that "/" is a network file system and therefore skips checking it. This is good news since the scheme described in "Diskless Nodes with Gentoo" is not entirely robust: if the diskless node dies before the "local" script is run the file will not be re-created. Testing was done on a manually installed Gentoo 2006.0 system, set up for diskless boot. It was confirmed that diskless boot works smoothly without the /fastboot file. The suggestion is to drop Code Listing 6.2 and the text that precedes it.
(In reply to comment #0) > In the February 13, 2006 version of "Diskless Nodes with Gentoo", at the > beginning of the section "Initialisation scripts", it is explained that a file > named fastboot should be created in the root file system of the diskless node. > This file affects the execution of the checkroot script. > > This file is no longer needed. The checkroot script uses a bash function named > "is_net_fs" (it is defined in /etc/init.d/functions.sh) to detect that "/" is a > network file system and therefore skips checking it. This is good news since > the scheme described in "Diskless Nodes with Gentoo" is not entirely robust: if > the diskless node dies before the "local" script is run the file will not be > re-created. > > Testing was done on a manually installed Gentoo 2006.0 system, set up for > diskless boot. It was confirmed that diskless boot works smoothly without the > /fastboot file. > > The suggestion is to drop Code Listing 6.2 and the text that precedes it. > It's been awhile since this bug was opened; we've had another release and stuff. Can anyone with a diskless system test this to confirm? It sounds good and all, but needs testing.
I can confirm this for the current stable baselayout-1.12.6, I just verified correct behaviour on my diskless client. /fastboot is no longer needed and I removed its creation from /etc/conf.d/local.start. Thanks for the bug report, that is one less workaround for my diskless machines.
Created attachment 102219 [details, diff] diskless-howto.xml.patch So, this patch should work?
Baselayout stuff confirmed, thanks to UberLord on IRC. Also thanks to the original reporter and to Jan. Fixed in CVS.
