Subject: Re: Booting a LiveCD
To: Martin Husemann <martin@duskware.de>
From: Chris Ross <cross+netbsd@distal.com>
List: port-sparc64
Date: 09/21/2007 00:31:38
On Sep 20, 2007, at 15:01, Martin Husemann wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 20, 2007 at 11:52:24AM -0400, Chris Ross wrote:
>>   I have an ofwquestion that I've been meaning to ask.  I notice
>> that the BOOTP
>> support in net_open doesn't know enough to learn from the  
>> parameters it
>> gets back from a DHCP server.
>
> This does not fit well into the structure of the bootloader (the  
> results
> from DHCP are available only after opening the network device,  
> which is
> long after all option parsing has happened). I did a quick hack  
> that does
> it partly, but does not get all debugging output correct and is so  
> ugly
> I do not want to commit it ;-)
>
> Doing it correctly probably needs more restructuring, which I'm not  
> sure
> is worth the effort.
>
> Note that it only works if you do not use DHCP at the prom level to  
> load
> ofwboot, and requires an unset boot-file variable.

   Right.  I was going to answer your previous question, but it looks  
like you figured that out.  You need to *not* use DHCP from the OBP,  
and have it load ofwboot (via tftp), and then ofwboot needs to speak  
DHCP.  I realize this is a little odd.  I guess I didn't realize I  
was doing it that way.  Hrm.

   It seems like there *should* be a way to tell ofwboot what kernel  
to boot from the same place it gets its IP address information, in  
the case of a network device boot.  We could always mint a vendor- 
specific DHCP option.  (*evil grin*)

                         - Chris