Hello Gavan!

  GF> As long as the machines are all the same architecture
    > and version, that should work. You almost certainly
    > want to keep /etc local. Be careful if you use pkgsrc
    > though, because if you share that, although you will
    > be able to you packages from /usr/pkg, the package
    > database won't be shared, so be careful not to use
    > any of the pkg_* tools or do a make in /usr/pkgsrc on
    > the NFS client machines.

Hmm... that might rquire some extended thought  :-)

  GF> How big a disc do you have in the client machines?

I don't know yet.  This was a semi-hypothetical question,
although I do have some systems that might be suited to this
type of configuration.  I think they generally have disks of
just over 100Mb, although I've not verified this.  How does
128Mb sound for a target?  128Mb solid state flash 'disks'
are available (although I'd probably be using mechanical
disks myself).

  GF> How big is an [E]PROM? ;o)

How big does it need to be?  <grin>

  GF> It can be made to fit into a flash card or similar,
    > but unless you get a rather big one, you'll have to be
    > very careful what you put on it.

In the light of morning I'm thinking of re-phrasing the
question (or asking a different one depending on your point
of view ;-)

If I were burning an EPROM, I'd probably look at putting
a monitor program and perhaps boot-loader on it, and have
the thing load the kernel from disk, or across the LAN
(that way I wouldn't have to re-blow the ROM every time I
changed the kernel).

However, if I had a huge ROM disk (or even a CD-ROM!), how
much of the filesystem hierarchy could be read-only?  Is
this even a remotely sensible question?

  GF> Having said that, you might get away with a kernel,
    > and a minimal /, with a memory disc for /tmp, and nfs
    > mounting everything else...

I think part of my motivation for a disk-light workstation
rather than diskless was to avoid having gobs of memory
eaten up by RAM disks.  Admittedly RAM is fairly inexpensive
these days, but if I were to try this with some of the gear
I have laying around, RAM upgrades wouldn't really be an
option.

Regards,
  - Andy Ball.