Back in December I asked on this list if anyone knew how to use the Dell/Quest/KACE K2000 appliance to network boot a PC into an NFS-mounted, read-only, live system (the purpose being to set up some diskless PCs in a public library for kiosks that are centrally managed by changing things in one place - the server - and having those changes show up automagically at all the clients (I've looked at other Linux-based kiosk tools, but haven't found quite what I was looking for)). That thread starts at https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/12/msg00146.html. I tried to put a follow-up to that thread, but it seems I did something wrong and it followed up to a different thread, found at https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/02/msg00578.html
I've gained enough understanding now that I can ask a different question, that perhaps someone on this list can answer: How can I build a bootable .ISO that then runs a Debian system from a shared NFS system on another Debian box? I've read plenty of HOWTOs and etc in the intervening weeks, and have gotten close a time or three, but there's always some little gotcha that gets in the way. Can anyone point me to a tutorial that both explains what to do and WHY!!!!! to do it and what each step accomplishes / should accomplish / how to test the step (so that if my situation varies in any way, I can know what I'm trying to accomplish other than just blindly typing commands). ( https://wiki.debian.org/PXEBootInstall does a great job of explaining the LTSP-type approach in this way, but I don't have control of our DHCP/TFTP servers, so I need to use a bootable .ISO instead of the whole LTSP package, which .ISO I can feed from our KACE K2000 server, which I do have control of.) I can set up two virtual machines (VirtualBox, although I also have QEMU installed, but have never gotten it to work) as a playground, so I can learn the concepts (one being the NFS-server, and one being the CD-booting workstation, so I can start with whatever flavor of Debian is needed. https://l3net.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/how-to-build-a-debian-livecd/ is another site that got me close to what I'm trying to do - I actually got to a grub screen, but it just looped over and over, so, not quite there yet, either in comprehension or in execution. Note, I'm trying to accomplish two things: 1) boot a "diskless" PC to run an NFS-mounted Debian system, and 2) understand how it works. It's this second point that most of the documentation out there has failed me, which in turn leads to a failure in the first point (because their system is a bit different than mine, etc). Thanks for any help you might toss my way! -- Kent West <")))>< Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com
