Hello Stefan, On Sun, 6 Sep 2020 13:52:28 +0200 Stefan wrote: > I’d like to propose these minimal changes to support an NFS as a root file system. Thanks! > Currently there are three ways to define the root file system: > > • (file-system (device (label …)) …), > • (file-system (device (union …)) …), > • (file-system (device "") …). > > The manual does not mention that an NFS is currently not supported as a root file system. However, NFS mounts are possible already with (file-system (type "nfs") (device "") …). Yeah. > This patch enables users to use an NFS also as a root file system without introducing a new syntax. That sounds like a good idea. For the time being, let's just use the string thing for your functionality--nevermind the thing for now. > I was asked before to introduce an record to achieve the same >And I did so, see . >But due to some other PXE efforts – for which I don’t see progress – that >patch got on hold. First, I like to apologize for the huge delay in handling this stuff. My original intent was to let Brice Waegeneire , my GSoC intern for network booting, handle your request--both because he needs it anyway and because he presumably has more knowledge on network booting. He's missing in action (no communication at all) and I gave up having Brice do it. In any case, his GSoC is over. I will now look at your request on my own. I obtained some Raspberry Pis, a NAS with TFTP server support out of the box and I made sure I could manipulate the DHCP server I use on my network, so the next step is to try to actually use your patchset myself--which I didn't do before (sorry). I want to note that patches with system tests are processed *much* faster--I don't think many reviewers would go to those lengths I did (obtaining special hardware) in order to test contributions--so usually, it would have been basically stuck forever without system tests. Thanks for persevering on this feature. > However, that record would brake with the compatibility of how an >NFS mount is defined today, and it makes the code much more complex without >having a real gain. The real gain would be this: There are a lot of options that one could need (see https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/nfsroot.txt . They have: >* (IP address of the NFS server) >* (name of the directory on the NFS server to mount as /, with %s as format string in order to substitute client IP address) >* : port (!), rsize, wsize, timeo, retrans, acregmin, acregmax, acregmin, acregmax, flags (hard, nointr, noposix, cto, ac). >ip=::::::: > :: > > This parameter tells the kernel how to configure IP addresses of devices > and also how to set up the IP routing table. It was originally called > `nfsaddrs', but now the boot-time IP configuration works independently of > NFS, so it was renamed to `ip' and the old name remained as an alias for > compatibility reasons. ). I'm just saying that it will become a record over time anyway. But maybe it will be something more general for PXE--hard to tell which is better at this point in time. So nevermind for now. > I think this minimal patch will not conflict with that other PXE effort. >Its only purpose is to enable the use of an NFS as a root file system already today. Yeah, I agree. However, I cannot see a patch as attachment to your E-Mail.