Subject: Re: how to boot into netbsd installer using pxe?
To: None <felix-netbsd@fefe.de>
From: Nino Dehne <ndehne@gmail.com>
List: tech-install
Date: 07/24/2005 19:17:01
felix-netbsd@fefe.de wrote:
> But the NetBSD kernel (I use the GENERIC install kernel), after
> detecting the hardware, asks me what device to boot from.

 From my limited knowledge, this is because GRUB has only rudimentary
support for booting NetBSD. The native NetBSD boot loader passes the
boot device to the kernel which GRUB doesn't know how to do.


> I'm not particularly glued to grub, if it is better to do this with
> syslinux (or $WHATEVER), I'm game.  However, I need to have a boot menu
> offering all the above operating systems, I can not simply boot directly
> into NetBSD's PXE loader.  And I want to offer a net-bootable memtest.

PXELINUX can chainboot the BSD's PXE loaders. You have to make sure the
file name on the TFTP server ends in .bin or .0, though. Of course the
idea of boot loaders booting boot loaders is ugly, but what can you do.
What would be cool is a NetBSD-quality boot loader that knows every
common kernel format and how to pass them args, can be booted via PXE or
locally and is as flexible as one could ever want. But I digress.

In the case PXELINUX can't boot memtest, you could chainboot GRUB from
PXELINUX. It's not nice but it works.

Regards,

ND