Re: Netbooting a sparc64 (netbsd-6)

[buhrow%lothlorien.nfbcal.org@localhost (Brian Buhrow)]

        Hello.  On cisco 2924 switches, you can give the command:
spanning-tree portfast default
in the main configuration mode to turn off the 15 second auto-negotiation
process.  This should cause things to come up much faster.  The trade off
is that if you inadvertently introduce a loop into your switch topology,
you may experience a brief outage while the spanning-tree protocol
calculates where the loop is and disables the port.  The 15 second delay at
link up time prevents this outage possibility at the expense of slow
initial connect times.
-Brian
On Feb 28,  2:04am, Eric Schnoebelen wrote:
} Subject: Re: Netbooting a sparc64 (netbsd-6)
} 
} Which switches are you using? And which model sparc64?
} 
} I have had no end of problems netbooting when connected to some
} models of Cisco Catalyst switch.  The dominate model in use here
} is a 2924, and it seems to take *forever* to do it's
} autonegociation.  So long that first ofwboot, and then the
} kernel frequently timeout.
} 
} I seem to remember adding a loop to an older bit of the netboot
} portion of ofwboot to try to broadcast the dhcp packet multiple
} times before giving up.. (and trying to avoid resetting the port
} in between.)
} 
} FYI: you don't need to hardcode the loader name as a hex
} representation of the client IP address when using DHCP.  Here
} is the configuration block I've used successfully:
} 
}     # get any vendor-class-identifier information
}     set vendor-class-id = option vendor-class-identifier;
} 
}     # standard netboot for the SunFire V120's 
}     # (so we don't need to create and entry for each one of them!)
}     class "SunFire-V120" {
}       match if substring(vendor-class-id,1,13) = "SUNW.UltraAX-";
}       spawn with hardware;
}       # next-server 192.67.63.1;
}       server-name "192.67.63.1";
}       filename "/netboot.netbsd.sparc64";
}       option root-path "192.67.63.1:/boot.d/netboot/install/sparc64";
}     }
} 
}     # standard netboot for the sparc64's booting with ofwboot.
}     # (so we don't need to create and entry for each one of them!)
}     class "Sun-Sparc64-NetBSD" {
}       match if substring(vendor-class-id, 0, 22)
}                           = "NetBSD:sparc64:kernel:";
}       spawn with hardware;
}       # next-server 192.67.63.1;
}       server-name "192.67.63.1";
}       filename "/netboot.netbsd.sparc64";
}       option root-path "/boot.d/netboot/install/sparc64";
}     }
} 
} --
} Eric Schnoebelen              eric%cirr.com@localhost         
http://www.cirr.com
}       Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the
}                       same thing as division.
>-- End of excerpt from Eric Schnoebelen