Subject: Re: net booting an IPC
To: Jonathan Sadler <sadler@homesys.org>
From: Peter W Waterland <peter.w.waterland@stud.man.ac.uk>
List: port-sparc
Date: 06/27/2003 13:27:18
> In order to reduce the amount of "rtfm" required, here are the relevant
> lines from my dhcpd.conf:

Greatly appreciated, thanks.

>   option root-path "/export/homesun-b/miniroot/sparc";

That was my next question! :)

I have progressed somewhat using a windows dhcpd server with 
inbuilt bootp, a windows tfpd and rarpd.
Now upon 'boot net' the sparc loads and runs the 
bootloader..transfers the kernel..and runs it.

Here my problems start once again!

DMESG runs..the faulty SCSI disk spins up (unplugged it now cos 
it started to hurt my ears!) and then the kernel tries to mount the 
filesystem.(i think).

after a number of BOOTP/DHCP fail messages the kernel 
announces it cant mount root on le0 and halts.

What is puzzling is why! The bootloader got the kernel with no 
trouble from the nfs server.

Looking at the error log for the dhcpd server..just repeated requests 
from the sparc and replies from the server. It doesnt give details :((

It seems that when the bootloader connects to the dhcp server it 
uses bootp. When the kernel connects to the dhcp server it uses 
DHCP protocol. So presumably something is wrong with my DHCP 
setup..currently I am passing the following options for bootp/dhcp 
requests from my sparcs MAC address.:

IPaddress	(192.168.1.30)
Magic Cookie (192.168.1.10)	(appears to correspond to server 
IP..only found this out after experimentation..no idea why its 
needed but w/o the server IP returned to the sparc is horribly 
incorrect) 

root-path	("/export/foo/root") (option 17..the client is called foo.../ 
is mounted onto c:\nfs\export\foo\root\)

If its not the dhcp server then it must be the NFS server, but it 
doesnt have the facility to log and windows NFS servers are rarer 
than hens teeth :/ Plus the nfs server is working in some capacity 
since it allows access to /export/foo/root/ for the kernel to be 
transferred.

Any suggestions? Hope that made some sense!

pete