You should be able to use the sysinst ramdisk kernel (apologies -
	I'm not online to check right now), which should be in the
	installation subdir of the NetBSD/sparc distribution.

	You still need to setup rarpd, boot.net, rpc.bootparams, and
	nfs export, but you can just put the ramdisk kernel as
	'netbsd' as the only file in the exported directory.

	Let us know how you get along :)


		David/absolute

On Mon, 7 Feb 2000, Robert Gash wrote:

> I recently (read: today) purchased a SS4 to serve as a NAT machine for my
> home LAN (and to get some experience dealing w/ Sun boxen).  However, the
> machine does not have a floppy or a CDROM, making it very hard to boot off
> of traditional boot medium (floppy, CD, etc.).
> 
> I read the installation docs for the sparc port, and from what I read it
> is possible to boot off of the network and install from there.  However,
> beyond the initial description of what needs to happen I find the
> documentation lacking.  By using both the install docs as well as the
> netboot HOWTO I have taken my best shot and done the following things to
> prepare (it's a Linux server):
>  
>  1) Made machine ready to handle RARP for the SS4 when I get the MAC
>  2) Setup TFTP on the server and copied the
>     sparc/installation/netboot/boot.net file over there (to be symlinked
>     to the hexip.archname when I get the name of the box)
>  3) setup rpc.bootparams to use this:
>      client root=phat-tom:/export/client/root
>  4) Unpacked kern.tar.gz base.tar.gz and etc.tar.gz to
>     /export/client/root
>  5) Made the /export/client/root/dev/console file (mknod c 0 0)
>  6) Exported the / FS w/ root RW perms (only to the client)
>  7) copied the /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.4.1/sparc/* files to
>     /export/client/root/NetBSD-1.4.1/* 
>  8) Edited root/etc/hosts root/etc/myname and root/etc/fstab to the specs
>     in the install.html file (fstab is like this:
>        phat-tom:/export/root/client / nfs rw 0 0 )
> 
> Am I missing any crucial steps here required to get the machine to boot
> the system needed to do an install to a harddrive?  If I have to netboot
> this machine, is this the proper procedure, or should I have a much more
> stripped-down /root somewhere?  If someone could provide the steps (or a
> link to a document that's a little bit clearer) to get a SS4 netbooting
> and ready to install via FTP -OR- NFS to a hard-drive physically attached
> to the machine, please let me know.  If there is another way to just get
> the system online with enough stuff to start an FTP install, that is also
> a perfectly acceptable way ot installing.
> 
> Thanks for your help.
> 
> -Robert
> 
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