Traditional diskless NFSroot

To boot using the traditional in-kernel NFSroot mechanism, the network interface must be compiled directly into the kernel rather than as a module. The same is also true for NFS client capabilities. Kernel-level autoconfiguration via DHCP is needed, and the ability to have the root file system on NFS (CONFIG_ROOT_NFS) must be enabled. Once DHCP is configured, nodes can boot diskless by specifying the following on the kernel command line:

• root=/dev/nfs ro ip=dhcp

Booting in this way has the benefit that an initramfs doesn't need to be sent across the network at boot time, and the boot is a little faster.