Very Computer

All you have to do to create a dataless environment is to setup
a server with the complete Solaris installation. Then, install
the "End-User' Solaris configuration on a to-be-dataless client.
After the machine reboots, simply modify /etc/vfstab to mount
/usr over NFS from another machine. (You will need a statically-linked
route program if your server and client are on different subnets).
Once this works then you can wipe-out the local /usr and use it
for whatever you want.

I admit doing things this way might not be as elegant as when using an
officially supported method but it works now and will continue
to work in the future, barring major changes

Am I missing something?

--
Anything you read here is my opinion and in no way represents the Univ. of Cal.

"I deal with dreamers, and telephone screamers." -- Joni Mitchell

   I'm not 100% sure of this but it looks to me like Sun really doesn't
   have to do anything to "support" dataless because there's nothing
   to do, except to make sure they continue to structure /usr and /var
   so that /usr can be mounted read-only and /var (or root) is where any
   machine specific files go.

   All you have to do to create a dataless environment is to setup
   a server with the complete Solaris installation. Then, install
   the "End-User' Solaris configuration on a to-be-dataless client.
   After the machine reboots, simply modify /etc/vfstab to mount
   /usr over NFS from another machine. (You will need a statically-linked
   route program if your server and client are on different subnets).
   Once this works then you can wipe-out the local /usr and use it
   for whatever you want.

We've being doing essentially the same thing since Solaris 2.3:

solberg{cjh} 41: df -k
Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0     246463  130225   91598    59%    /                  
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s3     494407  311302  133665    70%    /cache            
/cache/.cfs_mnt_points/export:_export_usr
                     6179687 4398517 1657578    73%    /usr

   I admit doing things this way might not be as elegant as when using an
   officially supported method but it works now and will continue
   to work in the future, barring major changes

   Am I missing something?

The only thing special that I needed to do in order to mount /usr
under cachefs was to comment out the following code in /etc/init.d/rootusr:

#
# Root is already mounted (by the kernel), but still needs to be checked,
# possibly remounted and entered into mnttab. First mount /usr read only
# if it is a separate file system. This must be done first to allow
# utilities such as fsck and setmnt to reside on /usr minimizing the space
# required by the root file system.
#
#exec < ${vfstab}; readvfstab "/usr"
#if [ "${mountp}" ]
#then
#       /sbin/mount -m -o ro /usr
#fi

--
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