Robert Schmid wrote:

>I am trying to install NetBSD1.6.1 onto a G3 Minitower.  Of the four
>machines I have installed NetBSD on, this is the most challenging. 
>Basically, every note that says "You might have to..." .  This is the
>machine they were talking about;
>
>Can't boot floppy
>Can't boot from CD  (Not sure about veracity of CD, though)
>
Ah, the dreaded Mac G3 Open Firmware errors. its a real pain in the ass 
too boot from the HD and from the network card and it only wants Coff 
packaged bootloaders.
and indeed it cannot boot cd-rom/floppy/zip/superdisk etc.
floppy based boots are known to fail every 9 ot of 10 tries (buggy OF 
implementation)

>
>So I set about to do a Netboot.  In the end I have had to;
>
>set use-nvramrc? to false
>strip out non-mac components
>use a serial console
>set `arp` by hand on the server.
>
>It now boots and gets the loader but freaks out getting the kernel.  It
>begins flooding the server with DHCP requests (about 30/sec) until some
>buffer overflows and the server freezes.
>
Did you provide the client a hostname with the dhcp server based on the 
client MAC adress? and did you make it easy for the OF to fetch a kernel 
eg. "netbsd.GENERIC_MD.gz" from a top level directory(you can fake this 
one when its deeper in your FS structure) with NFS for example 
/netbsd.GENERIC_MD.gz
you can also try to unpack the kernel on the server and then call it 
from the client.
example: boot enet:,ofwboot.xcf netbsd.GENERIC_MD

>
>The Host is set up as follows;
>
>    MacPPC 9600 w/ G3
>    NetBSD 1.5.2Y  (Custom kernel which has IPNAT turned ON)
>
>    2 ethernet cards
>        mc0: 10BaseT - set to real-world static IP (a.b.c.d)
>        ep0: 100BaseT - set to 192.168.1.1
>    DHCP listens on both cards.  It hands out a limited number of
>real-world IPs to known MAC addresses and 192 subnet addresses to
>unknown clients and has a fixed address (192.168.1.99) for this
>netboot client.
>    IP Forwarding IS ON:  ep0 forwards to mc0
>
>Client IP is fixed at 192.168.1.99 by dhcp through ep0.  arp is set to
>bind this address to the MAC address.
>
>After the bootloader is received, I noticed a lot of collisions on the
>switch between mc0 and the client.  And, by tailing the messages log on
>the host I can watch the client flood the host with dhcp requestst.
>
The only thing i can see is ceep the kernel path so simple as possible 
and try what happens when you completely disable the firewall or disable 
firewall rules for tftp, bootps, dhcp and NFS

>
>I suspect the problem lies with this IP forwarding setup, but I'm not
>really sure what I should do to fix it.  Do stop dhcpd from listening on
>mc0?  Do I change the client address to communicate on mc0's subnet
>instead of ep0?
>
>Suggestions?
>
>Robert Schmid
>
>
>  
>
and yes, the firewall setup killed me also with a powerbook g3/beige g3 
with the same Open Firmware. then i kicked the FW and the problems where 
gone.

hope this helps

cheers, Koen