Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Setting Up and Administering an HP-UX NFS Diskless Cluster

NFS Diskless Questions and Answers

Chapter 10 933

1. Before the client is added.

When you add a client via SAM, SAM creates two directories to hold

the client’s private ﬁles:

• the private root /export/private_roots/

client

• the boot ﬁle or kernel directory /export/tftpboot/client.

You can create these directories “by hand” (not using SAM), before

adding a client. The directories must be empty when you use SAM to

add the client.

So long as it ﬁnds these directories empty, the SAM cluster

conﬁguration code will honor them and put the appropriate ﬁles in

them. If the directories are not empty, the cluster conﬁguration code

exits with an error.

Creating the client directories ahead of time allows you to redirect

them to a volume with more disk space. You can do this by means of:

• A symbolic link to an empty directory on another volume.

• A mounted physical volume (the existence of a lost+found

directory does not affect the empty status).

• A mounted logical volume.

2. After the client is added.

After a client has been added, you can still move the client

directories to another volume and use symbolic links to link the old

directory to the new.

NOTE When you use SAM to remove a client and its ﬁles, if either the

private root or kernel directory is a symbolic link, SAM will remove

the target of the link, but not the link itself.

Question: I want /usr/bin to be a separate ﬁle system on my server.

Answer: This presents a problem.

Sharing between server and client is done by a mechanism called share

links. Under HP-UX, share links are deﬁned at /usr, /sbin, and several

directories under /opt.