Excerpts from netbsd: 3-Nov-97 netboot "Mark H. Levine"@polytro (1101)

> previously  we  at  my
> site  were  able to get the kernel from our build machine, from a
> separate spot on it so as not to conflict with the running kernel
> on the development machine using "rp", and then mount the network
> file systems for swap and root off our disk farm

Does this mean you had the directory containing the
kernels NFS exported too? As far as I know, the alpha bootblocks
can't TFTP the kernel.

> perhaps can we add new variables
> that the kernel will use to support separate tftp and nfs servers
> (some sort of remote nfs path, and an nfs server field)? 

I'm a bit confused - as things are now, only the console
does TFTP for the "netboot" program.
Do you want separate "kernel NFS" and "root NFS"
servers? If yes, a workaround would be to use the old
bootparam in either the bootblocks or the kernel. Both
should be easily done - a cpp definition for the bootblocks or
a variable (nfs_boot_rfc951) in the kernel.
If you want to TFTP the kernel, you can try to
pull some code from the i386 netboot.
And if you really only want to separate TFTP and
NFS servers, you can use the "swap server" BOOTP
tag - it will be used as NFS server if present.

best regards
Matthias