Diskless workstation accessing disk over lan

[rcbutcher]

I have several diskless boxes I want to run Knoppix off a CD (mounted on the diskless box), and use a host box on the lan to store working files.
Knoppix boots and correctly configures eth0, I can ping the host but can't find any nfs client on the Knoppix 3.6 CD. What do you guys use to access disks over the lan ?
Thanks
Rod

[ockham23]

Hi Rod,

here is my suggestion (for Knoppix 3.8, have no experience with 3.6):

1. Boot server from live CD
2. Run netcardconfig script from Knoppix menu, assign static IP address 192.168.0.1 to eth0, leave entries for "Gateway" and "Nameserver" blank
3. Run terminal server script from Knoppix menu, confirm default values, but allow root access on client (for troubleshooting, if needed)
4. Open root console, add user "diskless01" and assign Unix password
5. Run start ssh server script from Knoppix menu
6. Boot diskless client and select network boot (PXE) in BIOS settings
7. On client, when Knoppix has finished booting, click on home symbol in taskbar and type "fish://192.168.0.1"
8. Log in as user diskless01 using Unix password => you should now have access to home directory on server

This is a very simple setup, using only tools that ship with Knoppix. I hope it works for you. Good luck!

Reimar

[rcbutcher]

Thanks for responding Reimar. But I don't want to boot from network, I want the diskless box to boot Knoppix 2 (i.e. command line only, no X) from a Cdrom drive on the same box, but use the hard disk on the main host, which can run whatever network file servers (nfs, samba etc) are necessary.. So I suppose my question is, what network file protocols are available on the Knoppix disk ? What is this "fish" ?
thanks
Rod

[ockham23]

Sorry, I took "diskless" to mean w/o any disk drives.

"fish" is a graphical front end for ssh, available in KDE 3.4. By typing "fish://IP_of_my_server" in Konqueror, you can browse, copy and modify files on the server. It's a simple and convenient way to allow filesharing on a Linux network, very appealing to a (former) Windows user like me.


http://docs.kde.org/development/en/kdebase/kioslave/fish.html

[mjolnir]

Rcbutcher, did you ever get your set up working? I have something similar in mind and would appreciate some details if possible.