On Wed, 11 Feb 1998, emanuel stiebler wrote:

> what is the problem to boot a MV3500 with the MOP boot ?
> 
> i saw on the list already, that in the boot file there are no driver for
> the q-bus ethernet boards.
> 
> Could anyone explain me the problem ?

It's a valid question, but the answer is obvious if you understand the
basic events which lead to netbooting the NetBSD kernel.

* VAX's MOP routines load the second stage bootloader (boot.mopimage).
* Second stage bootloader boots /netbsd kernel using NFS.

Basically, the boot.mopformat bootloader doesn't support Q-bus ethernet
devices yet.  The implications being that since the bootloader can't find
an ethernet interface, it can't talk to the network.  If the bootloader
can't talk to the network, then it certainly can't NFS mount the root
filesystem.  If the bootloader can't NFS mount the root filesystem then it
can't boot the /netbsd kernel which resides on that filesystem.  Thusly
NetBSD doesn't boot.

The moral of the story being:  "You can't netboot a system when you can't
talk to the network from which you're attempting to boot the system."

-brian.
---
Brian "JARAI" Chase | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ | VAXZilla LIVES!!!