Supporting Remote Boot and Diskless Boot Clients (Task Map)
The Solaris DHCP service can support Solaris client systems that mount their operating
system files remotely from another machine (the OS server). Such clients are often
called diskless clients. Diskless clients can be thought of as persistent remote boot clients.
Each time a diskless client boots, the client must obtain the name
and IP address of the server that hosts the client's operating system files.
The diskless client can then boot remotely from those files.
Each diskless client has its own root partition on the OS server,
which is shared to the client host name. The DHCP server must always
return the same IP address to a diskless client. That address must remain
mapped to the same host name in the name service, such as DNS.
When a diskless client receives a consistent IP address, the client uses a
consistent host name, and can access its root partition on the OS server.
In addition to providing the IP address and host name, the DHCP server
can supply the location of the diskless client's operating system files. However, you
must create options and macros to pass the information in a DHCP message
packet.
The following task map lists the tasks required to support diskless clients or
any other persistent remote boot clients. The task map also provides links to
procedures to help you carry out the tasks.
Task |
Description |
For Instructions |
|---|
Set up OS services
on a Solaris server. |
Use the smosservice command to create operating system files for
clients. |
Chapter 7, Managing Diskless Clients (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration Also, see the smosservice(1M) man page. |
Set up the DHCP service to
support network boot clients. |
Use DHCP Manager or the dhtadm command to create new
Vendor options and macros, which the DHCP server can use to pass
booting information to the clients. If you already created the options for network install
clients, you need only to create macros for the Vendor client types of
the diskless clients. |
Chapter 2, Preconfiguring System Configuration Information (Tasks), in Solaris Express Installation Guide: Network-Based Installations |
Assign reserved IP addresses to the diskless clients. |
Use DHCP Manager
to mark address as reserved, or use the pntadm command to mark addresses
as MANUAL for diskless clients. |
Assigning a Reserved IP Address to a DHCP Client |
Set up diskless clients for OS service. |
Use the
smdiskless command to add operating system support on the OS server for each
client. Specify the IP addresses that you reserved for each client. |
Chapter 7, Managing Diskless Clients (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration Also, see the
smdiskless(1M) man page. |
