>Number:         5885
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       diskless(8) only documents RARP/BOOTPARAM
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    misc-bug-people (Misc Bug People)
>State:          open
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Jul 31 23:50:01 1998
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Scott Reynolds
>Organization:
>Release:        NetBSD-current as of 30 July 1998
>Environment:
	N/A
System: NetBSD polka 1.3F NetBSD 1.3F (POLKA) #19: Tue Jul 21 22:38:38 CDT 1998 scottr@polka:/a/src/sys/arch/hp300/compile/POLKA hp300


>Description:
	In tracking down why my diskless NetBSD/arm32 system failed to
	mount its root file system, I noticed something odd:  I could
	find no man page that specified exactly how I could make it work
	with my local network configuration.  The diskless(8) man page
	was particularly unhelpful, as it was all but completely
	specific to booting using RARP/BOOTPARAM.

	So that this knowledge is written down somewhere, here's the
	situation:  I have a nice, fast, spacious Network Appliance
	file server that has my NetBSD/arm32 file systems.  Unfortunately,
	NetApp doesn't implement a TFTP server -- at least not in the
	release we're using.  I decided to use my trusty HP 425t running
	NetBSD/hp300 as the TFTP server for loading the kernel.

	To make this work with dhcpd on -current, for example, you need to
	specify the following:

	    TFTP server		next-server tftp_server
	    NFS root server	option swap-server nfs_root_server
	    NFS root path	option root-path /root/path

	It would be nice to have something more intuitive, but documenting
	this odd(!) behavior would be better than nothing.

>How-To-Repeat:
	man diskless

	Note that there is vanishingly little on the topic of BOOTP/DHCP
	booting.

>Fix:
	Update or completely rewrite diskless(8).
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: