On Thu, 19 Feb 1998, Kevin P. Neal wrote:
> If you wanted to post directions on how to netboot using etftp that would be
> pretty cool. Like, how do you convert the file you get from MIT into a mop
> image?

Okay, sure, I can post directions.  However, I don't know how to convert
the file to a mop image.  I hope that whoever made boot.mopformat can tell
me how it is done.  I just hacked mopd-linux so it accepted a.out binaries
and ignored the mid field because it seems it is zero for 4.3BSD.  This
broke mopd so it can only work with that type of binary, but I don't
really care because I only netboot to install things.  If I have some time
and anyone cares about it I might try to fix it this weekend.

Anyways, here are the netbooting with etftp directions.
(I hope I can get this right now because I haven't gotten enough sleep.)

Things you need to get
----------------------

Get the hacked mopd and tftpd from:
http://www.mnsi.net/~bgjenero/uVAXII_netboot/
WARNING: These will *ONLY* work for netbooting using etftp.

Get etftp from:
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/system/vax_bsd43/srvd/tp/etftp

If you intend to use root over NFS then take a look at:
http://world.std.com/~bdc/projects/vaxen/index.html
In particular take a look at the Netboot HOWTO and the utilities.  You
need to load the kernel using etftp but after that everything is the same.
This means you will need rarp, bootparams and NFS.

How to set it up
----------------

Set up the hacked mopd.  Basically, compile it and run as "mopd -a".
Create a directory called /tftpboot/mop and put etftp in there.  You may
want to make a symlink from a file called <VAX ethernet address>.SYS to
etftp.  More info on mopd is in the netboot HOWTO.

Set up tftpd.  You will have to make an entry in inetd.conf and send
SIGHUP to inetd.  Since TFTP is such a stupid protocol you should probably
use the chroot option (maybe use /tftpboot as that directory).  Put the
netbsd kernel in that directory (the root directory if you aren't
chrooting)

(Optional) Set up bootpd.  This would allow you unattended reboots.  I
haven't done too much with this so I can't say much.


How to do it
------------

Boot the vax with "B/100 XQA0" and specify etftp as the bootfile (or if
you have the right symlink then just "B XQA0").  etftp should load and you
should get the Athena network bootstrap prompt.  Now enter the following.
<VAX ip address>=<TFTP server IP address>:<file to boot>
(<file to boot> is whatever you put in the TFTP directory, probably netbsd
or gennetbsd.  You can use paths there.)  If you don't type anything the
prompt times out and etftp eventually tries to use bootp.
You will get error messages from etftp which try to tell you that the
ethernet is not connected.  Ignore them... it is just trying to use a MIT
specific protocol and it will work without it.  Don't ignore TFTP error
messages... they actually mean something is wrong. You should see periods
appearing on the screen as the kernel loads and then the kernel should
execute. 

Now you will hopefully get to the point where the kernel is asking you for
the root device.  If you want root on NFS, specify qe0 as the root device
and nfs as the file system type.  NetBSD now does things just as if you
were on a VS2000.  You need the same rarp, bootparams and nfs setup.  I'm
not going into that here because it's all in the netboot howto.


|  Boris Gjenero <bgjenero@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>              |
|  Home page:  http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~bgjenero/     |
|  "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to   |
|  depend greatly on our own point of view." - Obi-Wan Kenobi, ROTJ  |