topic Remote Root Directory in ONTAP Discussions

Remote Root Directory

tsaksa13 — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 19:20:14 GMT

I am trying to use my NetApp to host the root directory for one of my systems. It PXE boots off a RHEL system and then I would like the NetApp to host the file structure for the / directory. When the system goes to load the root filesystem, it just hangs after the kernel is loaded. When I tried using a regular RHEL host to be the NFS server instead of the NetApp, everything works as planned. The only thing in the GRUB.cfg that I change is the IP from the NetApp to the RHEL NFS host. I was initially thinking it might be an NFSv4 problem, but switching to a RHEL host showed that NFSv4 is working as intended.

Is there a setting on the NetApp that needs to be enabled/disabled to allow a remote root directory to be used?

Re: Remote Root Directory

AlexDawson — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 23:31:22 GMT

Can you post the relevant line from the /etc/exports on your redhat system and vol qtree show -fields volume,qtree,export-policy and export-policy show;export-policy rule show from your NetApp system?

Also, when booted from the redhat NFS Server, can you mount the netapp NFS share and access and edit files on it as root?

Thanks!

Re: Remote Root Directory

tsaksa13 — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 14:43:45 GMT

I attached the two files you mentioned.

Yes I can always mount the netapp NFS share on any system on our network. One issue is that some systems show that nobody:nobody owns the files/folders. The permissions/ownerships are the exact same as the one on the RHEL server, but the NetApp seems to be changing it to nobody:nobody.

Re: Remote Root Directory

ClausH — Sun, 03 Mar 2024 12:38:16 GMT

Having nfsv4 NFSROOT not working can be due to
* not using a uniq id in boot cmdline 'nfs.nfs4_unique_id=XYZ'
* not using vers=4 in cmdline
* firewall problems with nfs ports 111 and 2049
* export problems not exporting to your client IP

I use dracut to build initrdimage and cmdline parms contain 'root=NETAPP-IP:/rootshareXYZ:vers=4,hard,ro nfs.nfs4_unique_id=XYZ rootovl'

It would be nice if NetApp could showcase this a bit more. The expertise is in the company since the netapp nodes can be netbooted already.