I find myself answering my own post for this query.  While I am out of
the frying pan on that on I'm into the fire on the next problem.  I also
conclude with some documentation change suggestions.

My problem was that I had forgotten to send HUP to mountd so the nfs
mount requests were failing -- so I guess error=13 means nfs mount
was unsuccessful.  

At this point I get past the root on server:/... and swap on server:/...
messages.  It now cannot find /sbin/init.

The last messages are:

root on server:/.../root
swap on server:/.../swap
exec /sbin/init: error 8
init: not found
panic: no init
Stopped at		_Debugger+0x4:	leave

I have populated the served up root area with an immage of of a normal
system and have verified that sbin/init from that root area does exists.
The kernel configuration has EXEC_AOUT and NFSCLIENT options.

Any ideas on what might be wrong?
===========================================
On the documentation:
man bootparams:
  Example
           dummy   root=/export/dummy/root \
                   swap=/export/dummy/swap \
                   dump=/export/dummy/swap
  Should be something like:
           dummy   root=server:/export/dummy/root \
                   swap=server:/export/dummy/swap \
                   dump=server:/export/dummy/swap
  (like diskless)

man diskless:
  8.   Export the required filesystems in /etc/exports:
             /usr -ro myclient
             # for SunOS:
             # /export/myclient -rw=myclient,root=myclient
             # for NetBSD:
             /export/myclient -maproot=root myclient
  Should be (last two lines)
             # for NetBSD
             /export/myclient/root /exports/myclient/swap -maproot=root myclient

johnh...

On Thu, 7 Nov 1996, John C. Hayward wrote:

> Dear Current Users,
>    I am attempting to set up a `diskless' bootable floppy.  I've tried
> to follow the instructions on man diskless(8) etc.
>    I have rpc.bootparamd running on i386 1.2 Beta in debugging mode.  I
> have built a i386 diskless kernel from 1.2B sources and installed it on a
> floppy and added the bootstap blocks with disklabel.  I have rarpd running
> on the server. 
> 
>    On booting it gets it's clients address and server address, hostname
> fine.  On the rcp.bootparamd display it shows a getfile for client and
> file root.  The returning info is what I put in /etc/rcp.bootparams for
> this client.  The /etc/exports export the server area, nfsd is up and
> running,  The server area etc/fstab looks ok (note I did not fine 
> fstab.nfs which was mentioned in the diskless man pages).
> 
>    Can someone point me in the right directions as to what this error
> means and how I can correct it?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> johnh...
> 
>