Re: Netbooting a sparc64 (netbsd-6)

[eric%cirr.com@localhost (Eric Schnoebelen)]

Which switches are you using? And which model sparc64?

I have had no end of problems netbooting when connected to some
models of Cisco Catalyst switch.  The dominate model in use here
is a 2924, and it seems to take *forever* to do it's
autonegociation.  So long that first ofwboot, and then the
kernel frequently timeout.

I seem to remember adding a loop to an older bit of the netboot
portion of ofwboot to try to broadcast the dhcp packet multiple
times before giving up.. (and trying to avoid resetting the port
in between.)

FYI: you don't need to hardcode the loader name as a hex
representation of the client IP address when using DHCP.  Here
is the configuration block I've used successfully:

    # get any vendor-class-identifier information
    set vendor-class-id = option vendor-class-identifier;

    # standard netboot for the SunFire V120's 
    # (so we don't need to create and entry for each one of them!)
    class "SunFire-V120" {
        match if substring(vendor-class-id,1,13) = "SUNW.UltraAX-";
        spawn with hardware;
        # next-server 192.67.63.1;
        server-name "192.67.63.1";
        filename "/netboot.netbsd.sparc64";
        option root-path "192.67.63.1:/boot.d/netboot/install/sparc64";
    }

    # standard netboot for the sparc64's booting with ofwboot.
    # (so we don't need to create and entry for each one of them!)
    class "Sun-Sparc64-NetBSD" {
        match if substring(vendor-class-id, 0, 22)
                            = "NetBSD:sparc64:kernel:";
        spawn with hardware;
        # next-server 192.67.63.1;
        server-name "192.67.63.1";
        filename "/netboot.netbsd.sparc64";
        option root-path "/boot.d/netboot/install/sparc64";
    }

--
Eric Schnoebelen                eric%cirr.com@localhost         
http://www.cirr.com
        Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the
                        same thing as division.