Re: Booting a NetBSD installer from pxelinux

[Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau%entel.upc.edu@localhost>]

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 5:05 PM, Manuel Bouyer 
<bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost> wrote:
> On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 03:56:07PM +0100, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I've been trying to boot a netbsd INSTALL kernel from pxelinux, but so
>> far I haven't got much success. I've tried with 6.0BETA amd64 INSTALL
>> kernels and it seems to be compiled without MULTIBOOT options, which
>> makes them useless with pxelinux. I've tried adding "options
>> MULTIBOOT" to the sys/arch/amd64/conf/INSTALL conf file, but the
>> resulting kernel is still not booting with pxelinux. I'm using the
>> following pxelinux configuration:
>>
>> label netbsd6-install
>>         kernel mboot.c32
>>         append rogerpau/netbsd-INSTALL
>
> FWIW, I load the netbsd bootloader from pxelinux, which then loads the
> NetBSD kernel:
> label netbsd
>  kernel netbsdpxe.0
>
> netbsdpxe.0 being /usr/mdec/pxeboot_ia32.bin
> This then allows me to load the kernel I want, load ramdisk modules, etc ...

Thanks!, this is really and advance. I can get to the NetBSD
bootloader, and using boot tftp:path/to/netbsd-INSTALL.gz finds and
loads the kernel, but it's tedious to write boot tfp:path/to/kernel,
is there some way to pass a config file as an argument to netbsdpxe.0?
That would be great.

Another problem that I've found (both from the BETA6 CD or the PXE
bootloader) is that "consdev comx" doesn't seem to work for me. I've
tried all the comX options, but the kernel always throws it's output
to the VGA port, any thoughts on this one? This is a Dell R310 by the
way.

This is the output I get, but I think it won't be of much help:

boot: netbsd


>> NetBSD/x86 PXE boot, Revision 5.1 (from NetBSD 6.0_BETA)
>> Memory: 542/3135040 k
Press return to boot now, any other key for boot menu
booting netbsd - starting in 0 seconds.
type "?" or "help" for help.
> consdev com1


>> NetBSD/x86 PXE boot, Revision 5.1 (from NetBSD 6.0_BETA)
>> Memory: 542/3135040 k
> boot tftp:rogerpau/netbsd-INSTALL.gz
PXE BIOS Version 2.1
Using PCI device at bus 2 device 0 function 0
Ethernet address 84:2b:2b:69:bd:cf
11628440+5725352+620280=0x1224a70

Thanks, Roger.