Re: Can you MOP boot an install kernel directly?

[thomas dzubin <thomasdzubin%gmail.com@localhost>]

Just a single data point: Yes, I have MOP booted my VAX 4000-105A from
a Linux MOP server within the past year.

I had purchased a VAX without a CD or floppy drive (yes, there were
3.5" floppy drives available for VAX), so I needed to MOP boot it.

I seem to recall I had to put my Linux box's Ethernet in promiscuous
mode and also had an entry for RARP to give the VAX Ethernet Mac
address and IP address

On Mon, Aug 4, 2025 at 3:48 PM Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost> wrote:
>
> On 2025-08-04 19:01, Paul Koning wrote:
> >
> >
> >> On Aug 4, 2025, at 12:36 PM, Jason Thorpe <thorpej%me.com@localhost> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Aug 4, 2025, at 7:45 AM, Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost>wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I'll just top-post to be lazy.
> >>>
> >>> First of all, as you know, MOP is the "native" way to netboot DEC machines from back in the day. And MOP sortof fills the place of both DHCP and TFTP in one. But it's more targeted for the explicit need of netbooting and remote management. But in a sense, for VAXen, it would be great if we had the possibility of getting all the netbooting though MOP and not need DHCP and TFTP. Not sure if that is possible, though.
> >>
> >> Can MOP supply the IP address to the system?  If not, you're not goingto be eliminating DHCP (or BOOTP).
> >
> > MOP has a "parameter load" message that can supply a couple of things, such as the system DECnet node address.  But there is no parameter code for IP address, unfortunately.  Not even in the Phase V version of MOP.
>
> If you have the information around, or in your head, I don't care what
> they call the "address" field. But is it limited to two bytes, or can it
> be of different sizes? If we can get four bytes in there, then it can
> certainly be an IP address.
>
>    Johnny
>
> --
> Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
>                                    ||  on a psychedelic trip
> email: bqt%softjar.se@localhost             ||  Reading murder books
> pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>