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Tonight I installed my first diskless Ubuntu system. The version I used is the latest available as of today, 7.04 "FeistyFawn". This article covers the client part.

My other diskless machines all run Gentoo (for the time being). I've described previously how I set up my SB 100, the rest of the setup was based on this article.

The following two articles were helpful:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/OnNFSDrive
http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/Feisty/HOWTO:_Convert_Ubuntu_to_Diskless

However I found some of the info to be uncomplete or outdated.

From what I have read, unlike with Gentoo, it seems that there is no easy way to get a working diskless Ubuntu system directly. Instead, you have to install to a disk first, and then make your setup diskless. I did not really want to open the box, so I tried first to install on a 2 GB CF card, which didn't work because the card was full before the install completed (du now reports that the system is 2.1 GB big). So I ended up putting a disk in the box, and I ran a regular install.

Note: As in the SB100 article, 10.0.0.10 will be my dhcp/nfs/tftp server ('fileserver'). 10.0.0.30 will be the Ubuntu desktop.

Once that was completed, instead of rebooting as suggested by the installer, I opened a shell (gnome-terminal), and ran:

sudo su -

mkdir /mnt/tmp

mkdir /mnt/nfs

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/tmp

mount 10.0.0.10:/diskless/ubuntu /mnt/nfs

cp -a /mnt/tmp/* /mnt/nfs/

After that, there are just a couple of things that need to be changed:

chroot /mnt/nfs

mount -t proc proc proc

vi etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf

and make sure you have:

BOOT=nfs

then run:

update-initramfs -u

Now check what you have in /boot, and update your network boot config files accordingly. I use pxegrub, and here is how /boot/grub.lst looks like:

default 0

timeout 10

title=Diskless Ubuntu

root (nd)

kernel /diskless/tv/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic ip=dhcp root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=10.0.0.10:/diskless/tv ro quiet splash

initrd /diskless/tv/boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic

Finally, don't forget to update etc/fstab and etc/network/interfaces. I've read several theories, here is what worked for me:

fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.

#

#                

proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0

/dev/nfs        /               nfs     defaults        0       0

/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0

network/interfaces:

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback



auto eth0

iface eth0 inet static

        address 10.0.0.30

        netmask 255.255.255.0

        network 10.0.0.0

        broadcast 10.0.0.255

        gateway 10.0.0.1

(note: commenting out eth0 as suggested in some places made the system hang during the boot process.)