As a demonstration I traced date(1) on CentOS. Here are the file accesses, if you are running diskless, each of these needs a round trip to the file server. (except the final 3, of course)

access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 3

fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=54185, ...}) = 0

close(3) = 0

open("/lib64/librt.so.1", O_RDONLY) = 3

read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0@!\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832

fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=43880, ...}) = 0

close(3) = 0

open("/lib64/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = 3

read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0p\356\1\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832

fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1921176, ...}) = 0

close(3) = 0

open("/lib64/libpthread.so.0", O_RDONLY) = 3

read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0\340]\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832

fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=142640, ...}) = 0

close(3) = 0

open("/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive", O_RDONLY) = 3

fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=99158576, ...}) = 0

close(3) = 0

open("/etc/localtime", O_RDONLY) = 3

fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=3661, ...}) = 0

fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=3661, ...}) = 0

read(3, "TZif2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\7\0\0\0\7\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 3661

lseek(3, -2338, SEEK_CUR) = 1323

read(3, "TZif2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\10\0\0\0\10\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 2338

close(3) = 0

fstat(1, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 0), ...}) = 0

write(1, "Tue Feb 24 08:57:58 GMT 2015\n", 29) = 29

close(1) = 0