[mythtv-users] OT: Managing packages in diskless clients

[Otto Kolsi]

Hi,

I managed to get diskless frontend working working quite well following 
the MythTV Wiki and "Diskless Frontend" HOWTO. I have FC5 based client 
installation and I mount root, snapshot and and myth specific folders in 
the client using NFS.

However, once I start to use yum for package management (in the diskless 
client) e.g. to upgrade nvidia drivers, things get difficult. By 
default, root filesystem is mounted as a read-only and only certain 
files and folders listed in specific files "files" or "files.custom" are 
mounted as a read-write. In practice this means that using yum is very 
difficult since most of the files and directories are read-only.

What I've done is that I've tried to install and update various packages 
and when I encountered problems, I've added specific files and folders 
to the "files.custom" file (ld.so.conf, /var/lib/rpm etc.). So that 
after next client boot, those are mounted as a read-write and yum is 
able to function. At the same time, I have copied diskless client files 
in the server side back and fourth between read-only root and read-write 
snapshot directories trying to make all the necessary files available as 
read-write for "yum" and "rpm" etc.

I think that I've managed to run into situation where I need to build 
the diskless frontend from the scratch. And I think that my current 
approach is not the optimal one to manage packages in diskless clients 
:) What I'd like to know is that what is the preferred way to do the 
package management in diskless clients using yum?

Should I continue specifying necessary files and directories as a 
read-write through  "files.custom"? Or should I somehow mount the whole 
root partition as a read-write from the beginning to avoid problems? Or 
should I manage packages in the server side using chroot somehow?
-- 
   Otto