Help with /etc/dms needed badly!

[John Dotts Hagan]

I have had it with dms myself!  Mark Litwack and I spent DAYS with dms trying
to get it to be useful.  However, no luck.

Anyway, dms sucks because you HAVE to have an extra whole /usr environment
loaded.  In our case, we wanted to share the same /usr the server has with
the clients (like SUN would let you do).

So here is what we did to get our systems running, and save about 250 MEG.
Just load a diskfull system (like the server) and copy his root partition to
a file.  Then, use standalone on the "diskless" systems with local swap disks,
and rsh over the dd'ed root partition into the a partition of the local swap
disk.  Fix up some files, like the /etc/hosts and /etc/rc.local so the client
system has its own personality (there are other files to fix up, too - if
interested ask me and I will send you a list of the files we edit), then make
/etc/fstab mount the server's /usr (make sure every system has its own /var
somehow clever with symbolic links).

That works for us.  We take 16 MEG from our 104 MEG swap to be a root file
system, and poof - no dms crap used at all!  We can even use clients that
are seperated by an IP router from their server (couldn't before - needed
MOP_MOM to boot)!  I have asked Digital REPEATEDLY to tell me how/if I can
boot DECstation 3100's with TFTP, but all the people I asked NEVER UNDERSTOOD
WHAT I WAS ASKING.  THEY SENT ME SEVERAL WILD ATTEMPS TO ANSWER MY QUESTION
THAT CLEARLY SHOWED THEY DID NOT EVER CATCH ON TO WHAT I WAS ASKING.

I believe this is more or less what MIT Athena does to support workstations.
I now see why... 

--Kid.