Subject: Re: Netbooting again
To: None <tim@snowgoons.fsnet.co.uk>
From: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
List: port-i386
Date: 12/14/2001 21:25:26
On Fri, Dec 14, 2001 at 01:39:25PM +0000, Tim Walls wrote:
> Hello again folks,
> 
> On the subject of netbooting NetBSD-i386 on my NetVista, I've got a little
> further, but definitely still need some help...  If anyone has ever got
> NetBSD-i386 to succesfully netboot I'd love to hear from you <grin>.
> 
> 
> I've coaxed the NetVista's boot PROM to load something over tftp, and this
> stage of things works fine.  For the sake of seeing what happens, I just gave
> it a GENERIC 1.5.2 kernel to download.  (Also tried INSTALL.)  I didn't see any
> mention of a secondary boot loader being necessary for i386 so assumed there
> wasn't one, although I'm happy to be corrected...

Of course you need one; there's one for disk boot.
There has been reports that GRUB could be used as secondary boot loader
to load the kernel over network.

> [...]
> 2. I couldn't find a precompiled DISKLESS kernel for i386.  Are the GENERIC or
> INSTALL kernels smart enough to look over NFS for a root partition if they
> don't find a local disk, or do I need to build a new kernel?  (Obvious catch 22

GENERIC should do it.

--
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
--