NFS Boot: Sharing common root directory over nfs, with customized individual snapshot directories

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NFS Boot: Sharing common root directory over nfs, with customized individual snapshot directories

I noticed that an older kernel command-line method of NFS booting a client is depecreated. There's a new document for setting up NFS diskless client booting https://access.redhat.com/sites/default/files/attachments/configuring_diskless_clients_with_red_hat_enterprise_linux_0.pdf, but there's no documentation linked for using separate, host-specific directories that allow clients to have their own files and directories that are nfs mounted like "/var/log/ and /etc/fstab" Is anyone aware of a solution that uses host-specific "snapshot directories?" And furthermore, does Redhat support this configuration?

This is what the older config looked like.
The PXE pointer would look like this:

label nfsbooter
kernel /rhel-6.8-nfsroot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-642.6.1.el6.x86_64
append initrd=/rhel-6.8-nfsroot/initrd.img NFSROOT=:/.admin/share/nfsroot/6.8-ldap NFSFLAGS=rsize=65536,wsize=65536,actimeo=600,nocto,tcp crashkernel=auto ipmi_si.kipmid_max_busy_us=100 audit=0 selinux=0

The exported NFS directory had two subdirectories. The shared "root" directory ("/") that was set to read-only, and all diskless clients had access to. There was also a "snapshot" directory that had host-specific sub directories that were only accessible by the clients. These subdirectories were RW, which basically told the system to use the present files in the snapshot directory instead of the RO "root" directory. The files and subdirectories in "snapshot" included files and dirs such as "/var/log/", "/etc/udev/rules.d/", "/etc/fstab"

The "files" file included a list of directories and files that the system should use instead of pulling from the shared "root" directory.

nfsroot
└──
│ └── root ["/" directory]
│ └── snapshot ["host-specific directory"]
│ └──files
│ └──diskless_client_hostname_a
│ └──diskless_client_hostname_b
│ └──diskless_client_hostname_c

Thanks,

Sam

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