*BSD News Article 49656


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From: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu (Bill Paul)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD diskless
Date: 23 Aug 1995 22:37:34 GMT
Organization: Columbia University Center for Telecommunications Research
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Daring to challenge the will of the almighty Leviam00se, Thomas Graichen
(graichen@sirius.physik.fu-berlin.de) had the courage to say:

: hello

: has anybody set up a (or some ...) FreeBSD machines diskless - with root
: _and_ swap via nfs - i've got it working so far very good - but only with
: local swap - if i try to use swapping over nfs the system comes up ok - but
: short after it starts swapping many processes die on signals 11 and
: sometimes 6 and the machine hangs - are there any tricks i don't know ?

: thanks in advance - t

: p.s.: it's FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE

I'm doing it with a 386sx/16 with 4 megs. (This machine does nothing
except run rarpd and bootparamd.) The server is a sun4c running
SunOS 4.1.3. One magic thing to watch for is that you need to specify
the resvport in the configuration file. Also, I'm using al old 8-bit
3c503 ethernet card that needs conservative NFS blocksize settings.

The swap file looks like this:

-rw-r--r--   1 nobody   sysman   10743808 Aug 23 18:34 /proj/export/swap/swap.128.59.72.36

Here's my config file:

hostname bootserv
rootfs 128.59.64.60:/proj/export/root/ctri386
swapfs 128.59.64.60:/proj/export/swap
kernel vmunix
rootopts resvport,rsize=4096,wsize=4096
swapopts resvport,rsize=4096,wsize=4096
swapsize 15000

Once the machine has the rootfs mounted from the primary server, it
mounts /usr from another Sun server.

-Bill

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~T~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Bill Paul            (212) 854-6020 | System Manager
Work:         wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research
Home:  wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City
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