How does VNFS work?

[zhaoha]

Hi, I'm new to warewulf. I installed a g++ in VNFS root path. But after I do 'wwvnfs --chroot $CHROOT' and reboot the node, I do not find /usr/include directory on node. This directory contains g++ head file, and exists on $CHROOT on master. So I wander how to export this or any directory in $CHROOT, which I think is very important for stateless machine environment configuration.

[jmstover]

By default there is an entry in /etc/warewulf/vnfs.conf of ...

hybridize += /usr/include

Comment out this line and rebuild the VNFS. What hybridize does is remove the directory from the VNFS, and set up a symlink to an NFS mount if you specify that. If you don't do hybridization, it just removes those directories from the VNFS.

[zhaoha]

By default there is an entry in /etc/warewulf/vnfs.conf of ...

hybridize += /usr/include

Comment out this line and rebuild the VNFS. What hybridize does is remove the directory from the VNFS, and set up a symlink to an NFS mount if you specify that. If you don't do hybridization, it just removes those directories from the VNFS.

Thank you. That clarifies a lot. So based on this, what is the best strategy of master provisioning node? For example I have a pretty complicated program which relies on a lot of headers and libraries. I want to compile this program once on master and run it on each of the nodes. So I want to share the /usr/lib and /usr/local/lib of master via NFS cause that's the location of these libraries. Is this a good strategy or is there anything better?

[jmstover]

In this case, you're probably better off commenting out the entries you need in the vnfs.conf file so everything is local to to the VNFS instead of NFS mounted. Lets say you installed an entire set of programs under /usr/local or similar, you could export that and share it out.

You can always test hybridizing it, see if you run into any issues. But from my limited understanding, you'll probably be better off including it in the VNFS.