Solved [Questions] Programs & Features

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lilcarp87

I read the handbook session 1.2 - Welcome, it said:
FreeBSD can even boot “diskless” from a central server, making individual workstations even cheaper and easier to administer.
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Does it mean that the Central Server (I don't know if this is a regular PC or a real server) should have run FreeBSD and it can make any operating systems (Linux/Windows/Mac/Unix) work diskless under it?


Thanks for reading! All answers are appreciated.​
 
No, it doesn't matter what OS the server itself runs. And the only difference between a "regular PC" and a "server" are the applications that run on them. A regular PC will serve just fine as a server (I have several of them).
 
That particular line is referring to network booting. The workstation has no local hard disk and gets its boot loader from a server (most commonly using DHCP+tftp). The root file system is then mounted using NFS. This can make administering a lot of workstations quicker/easier in some cases as they can share a file system that is managed centrally. You update the file system on the server, reboot all 1/100/1000/etc workstations and they all come up with the new version.

Depending on how the clients access the central file systems will limit the OS choice for the server. For example if using NFS, obviously the server will need to support being an NFS server. Not all operating systems support booting off the network as a client but I'm pretty sure most if not all UNIX based ones do (Not sure about Mac OS?). Don't think you can network boot Windows, and I wouldn't want to use Windows as the server in this instance either. One I don't think it has an NFS server, and if it did, the permissions differences between the UNIX clients and the server would probably just be a pain. Ideally you'd want the clients and server running the same OS.
 
Oh my... I mostly work on Windows because of multimedia job. I often buy external hard drives and currently have 6x 4TBs and some small 2.5" also with 3.5" USB 3.0 cases lying around my floor and on shelve.
Someone suggested me to learn about Linux and then the research came up that Unix has networking feature superior than Linux, especially ZFS stuff. Actually, I have no knowledge about network and I have not even installed FreeBSD yet. Still, the tool names FreeNAS took me here since I see its Logo website is the same as this forum. Before that, I used to run RAID-0 with 2x2TBs HDD, now I use SSD for speed and store the rest on external drives.

I was thinking about placing all drives into a full tower case make it as a FreeBSD server, so I would not have to worry about malware/spyware that access my valuable data since someone said BSD family is designed by hardcore or die-hard programmers and then I can turn on my other PCs that run Windows to work with Photoshop and an Arch Linux laptop is just a simple thought which is now about to end.
SirDice said:
It has but it's performance is abysmal. Steer very far away from anything NFS on Windows
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lilcarp87 said:
I was thinking about placing all drives into a full tower case make it as a FreeBSD server, so I would not have to worry about malware/spyware that access my valuable data since someone said BSD family is designed by hardcore or die-hard programmers and then I can turn on my other PCs that run Windows to work with Photoshop and an Arch Linux laptop is just a simple thought which is now about to end.
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If you have Windows clients the best way is to use Samba (SMB/CIFS) to share the files. These are easily mounted on Windows and its performance is really good. For all intents and purposes you are basically turning your FreeBSD server into a Windows file and printer sharing server.

Keep in mind that this will not save your files from malware though, this is a common misconception. You need to realize your Windows client has a connection to a share on the server. Anything the Windows client can do on that share can also be done by malware. So if your Windows client is infected the files on the server are fair game too.
 
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