Subject: Re: net booting an IPC
To: mmmckpww@stud.man.ac.uk, port-sparc <port-sparc@netbsd.org>
From: Gerald Richter <glassman1@neonshadow.net>
List: port-sparc
Date: 06/27/2003 07:07:19
Find a x86 machine to convert to a NetBSD boot server and transfer your 
NFS stuff for this machine to it. My milage with the NetBSD kernel NFS 
mounter is that it will only work with a NetBSD NFS server. I consider 
this behaviour broken, but there seems to be little interest in changing 
it. I've faithfully tried getting the NetBSD kernel to remote mount off 
anything but NetBSD since 1.5.1 with my old sparc 4/110 VME unit. As 
always your milage will probably vary. Best of luck to you.

-Gerald

Peter W Waterland wrote:
>>In order to reduce the amount of "rtfm" required, here are the relevant
>>lines from my dhcpd.conf:
> 
> 
> Greatly appreciated, thanks.
> 
> 
>>  option root-path "/export/homesun-b/miniroot/sparc";
> 
> 
> That was my next question! :)
> 
> I have progressed somewhat using a windows dhcpd server with 
> inbuilt bootp, a windows tfpd and rarpd.
> Now upon 'boot net' the sparc loads and runs the 
> bootloader..transfers the kernel..and runs it.
> 
> Here my problems start once again!
> 
> DMESG runs..the faulty SCSI disk spins up (unplugged it now cos 
> it started to hurt my ears!) and then the kernel tries to mount the 
> filesystem.(i think).
> 
> after a number of BOOTP/DHCP fail messages the kernel 
> announces it cant mount root on le0 and halts.
> 
> What is puzzling is why! The bootloader got the kernel with no 
> trouble from the nfs server.
> 
> Looking at the error log for the dhcpd server..just repeated requests 
> from the sparc and replies from the server. It doesnt give details :((
> 
> It seems that when the bootloader connects to the dhcp server it 
> uses bootp. When the kernel connects to the dhcp server it uses 
> DHCP protocol. So presumably something is wrong with my DHCP 
> setup..currently I am passing the following options for bootp/dhcp 
> requests from my sparcs MAC address.:
> 
> IPaddress	(192.168.1.30)
> Magic Cookie (192.168.1.10)	(appears to correspond to server 
> IP..only found this out after experimentation..no idea why its 
> needed but w/o the server IP returned to the sparc is horribly 
> incorrect) 
> 
> root-path	("/export/foo/root") (option 17..the client is called foo.../ 
> is mounted onto c:\nfs\export\foo\root\)
> 
> If its not the dhcp server then it must be the NFS server, but it 
> doesnt have the facility to log and windows NFS servers are rarer 
> than hens teeth :/ Plus the nfs server is working in some capacity 
> since it allows access to /export/foo/root/ for the kernel to be 
> transferred.
> 
> Any suggestions? Hope that made some sense!
> 
> pete
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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>