Re: Shared-root diskless netboot, critical local/remote mounts, and rc.conf

[Chris Hanson <cmhanson%eschatologist.net@localhost>]

On Oct 10, 2025, at 2:18 PM, Greg A. Woods <woods%planix.ca@localhost> wrote:
> 
> At Fri, 10 Oct 2025 19:54:06 +0200 (CEST), Jarle Greipsland <jarle.greipsland%norid.no@localhost> wrote:
> Subject: Re: Shared-root diskless netboot, critical local/remote mounts, and rc.conf
>> 
>> The message I replied to presented the idea that the information
>> in /etc/fstab could be combined with information from a directory
>> service (networked, presumably).  In order for this to happen,
>> the OS must already be running from a NFS-mounted root (since it
>> is a diskless system), and thus the kernel must already have
>> established some basic net connectivity.
> 
> Indeed -- and so why invent yet another complex maze of things to add on
> to what's already got to be done to get there in the first place?!?!?!?

It’s not really inventing anything new to have getfsent(3) et al contact a directory service discovered at boot, and it has the advantage of not requiring changes to anything outside NetBSD.

Essentially “all” that’s required will be to give libc/gen/fstab.c the same treatment as (say) libc/gen/getgrent.c, and to add support for fstab to nsswitch. Then I can add fstab support to an NSS plug-in and it should just work.

  -- Chris