> From: "Jeff Rhyason" <jeffr@agt.net>
> Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 22:50:40 +0000

> When I boot using netboot and mount a remote directory in /mnt, I 
> get "Permission Denied" on particular things.  Soemtimes it's on the 
> whole directory, or just subdirectories, or random files in the 
> directory.  Every file on the server side is owned by root, group 
> root, and is mode 775 or 664.  That's an annoyance more than it is a 
> problem; I can deal with randomness :-)  The real problem comes when 
> I try to write to the filesystem (when both the ramdisk and the nfs 
> filesystem have been remounted read/writable).

Are the filesystems exported with client root privileges?

> Is it possible that this error comes about because of the lack of 
> physical memory (there is only 4mb in there) and swap space?  I know 
> that I get the message "panic: init (something)ed" when trying to 
> boot the Xkernel SunOS derivatibe.

The 4MB should be OK for boot up and minimal work, but will give you
very poor performance for compilation, or X, etc.

> Since I have no place to write the miniroot filesystem to, I thought 
> I might be able to mount it FROM the mounted NFS file system as if it 
> was a device (ex: mount_nfs 123.123.123.1:/asdf /mnt ; mount 
> /mnt/miniroot /mnt2 ), however, this requires having a writable 
> filesystem, which I am able to achieve with mount -o rw / (I was just 
> guessing on that one).  

You don't need the miniroot for diskless installation.  Just unpack
the distribution on the server.  See the diskless(8) manpage.

> Is all this standard practice, or is there a better way to install?  
> Is there anyplace to get  (or anyone who is willing to donate)
> a live filesystem image?

The miniroot.gz is a live filesystem, but you should not need it.

Gordon