# NFS Root multiple clients?

## bastibasti

Hi,

I have installen Gentoo into a directory (i.e "/diskless/default") and nfsboot etc works fine. my question is, how to make ist possible to use THIS ONE install on multiple machines? (split the intall into each subfolder like /bin/ /etc and so on?) or is it better to use seperate installs for each machine, which would be a waste of space??

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## SnEptUne

Can you explain why you cannot use that for multiple client?  NFS mount works the same regardless of the number of clients...

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## bastibasti

Thenodes are all different, so

1) different /etc settings

2) can KDE handle multiple access to .kde home directory?

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## Zepp

This seems like a bad idea. If you could find some way of keeping a diff of the filesystem for each install it would work and save space. But having multiple hosts using the same writeable root fs sounds like trouble. Also, an OS install doesn't really take up a lot of space.

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## tarpman

Have a look at the FHS.  You can share parts of your filesystem between machines but not others.

A few notable things you can share between machines:Startup directories (/bin, /boot, /lib, /sbin)Read-only application data (/usr, /opt)/home (most environments are AFAIK ok with network-shared home directories; at least that's been done in a few places I've been)Under Gentoo, if you share /usr and /opt, you should probably share Portage data (/usr/portage, /var/db/pkg and /var/lib/portage) as wellA few notable things you should not share between machines:/etc (if you want shared configurations, keep them in source control or something)Runtime directories (/var/run, /var/cache, /var/lock, and parts of /etc)Temporary files (/tmp, /var/tmp)/dev (well, on Linux this is usually tmpfs anyway!)So you will need to split up your folders a bit; but the really big ones (/usr and /opt) can definitely be shared.

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## bastibasti

Thanks for the answers and explainations.  I will have to keep "playing" around and try which solution is the best. 

Good thing is, portage etc is not neccessary. The clients are all relatively small machines so no compiling will be made on them anyway...

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## bunder

NFS questions go here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum-f-18.html

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## nixnut

Moved from Off the Wall to Networking & Security.

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