on 4/20/00 1:18 AM, Ji Bae at jhb8@cornell.edu wrote something like:
 
> What difference does it make whether I specify a boot path in bootptab
> versus in the environment variables?

    First: You wouldn't think it would, but sometimes it does, I've seen
some ports tack the boot path onto the root path, so unless you specify
../../../etc etc etc. it would never find it. Secondly: There is no reason
to specify the boot path in the first place. thirdly, and more importantly:
the default boot path IS /tftpboot, having it anywhere other than /tftpboot
won't work unless you have edited /etc/services to change the tftpd security
path and/or disabled tftpd security (neither of which are recommended).
    There are man pages for these things, if you start bootp in debug mode,
*actually* reading your system error log and/or reading the man pages will
lead you to a solution. As I mentioned before, I have netbooted this exact
machine with no problems, you must be missing something big. There are
several netbooting howto's on www.netbsd.org if you take the time to look.
    IMHO Netbooting is worthless. Takes 20x more time, gives you 20x more
frustration than if you actually a.) removed the HD and wrote the diskimage
with dd or b.) bought a SCSI device from which you could boot. e.g. It takes
hours to figure netbooting out. setup hd: 2-3 minutes; time to dd disk
image: 7-10 seconds; install hd: 2-3 minutes.


-- 

Murphy was an optimist.