"Your system will not netboot without a working
   NVRAM."
   
   Is this 100% true or can I fudge a mac address using
   mkp (which is what I have been doing for a while to
   run the thing with a disk).

well - using mkp etc recreates a working NVRAM :)  it's just 
not very non-volatile  :)
   
   The next thing is this. I'm going step by step through
   the diskless setup web pages, and I've set up rarp,
   tftp and nfs. When I type this on my machine (sparc1):
   
   ok boot net
   
   And get the error:
   
   The IDPROM checksum is incorrect.The IDPROM checksum
   is incorrect.The IDPROM checksum is incorrect.Got
   error packet: Error Code 1 Message: File not found

so - you haven't done enough 'mkp' steps :-)  re-read the NVRAM faq.
   
   I get this in the syslog of my server:
   
   Oct  1 22:45:46 roadrunner rarpd[159]: received packet
   on ex0
   Oct  1 22:45:46 roadrunner rarpd[159]:
   08:00:20:ff:ff:ff asked; sparky.andy.com replied
   Oct  2 05:45:47 roadrunner tftpd[780]: 192.168.1.6:
   read request for /tftpboot/C0A80106.SUN4C: File not
   found
   
   Well, this file does indeed exist:
   
   roadrunner# pwd
   /tftpboot
   roadrunner# ls -l
   total 0
   lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  35 Oct  1 22:44
   C0A80106.SUN4C -> /home/sparky/root/usr/mdec/boot.net

# cd /tftpboot
# ln -s . tftpboot

and see if that works - tftpd i think chroot()'s by default these days,
so asking for /tftpboot/foo doesn't work.


.mrg.