Re: Good netboot guide or alternative for loading SS20

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA@localhost>]

> The problem is that I don't have a working SCSI CD-ROM drive so it
> looks like I have to netboot to get this [SS20] going.  Is this just
> a matter of copying the boot CD to a file area on an NFS server?

Not _quite_ that simple.

You need to set up reverse ARP for it to get its address and TFTP for
it to get bootblocks.  That's all the ROMs demand; the NetBSD netboot
booter expects to get an address via bootparamd and/or DHCP (I think it
tries each in turn) and a kernel via NFS.  (There's probably a step
I've forgotten; my diskless boot setup dates back far enough that
wetware memory has long since lost the details of its setup.)

> Has anyone got a good link for setting up a netboot server for
> NetBSD?  In this case the server would be a FreeBSD box.

I think there's a NetBSD diskless how-to somewhere on www.netbsd.org;
I've found one of the most useful things to do is tcpdump on the boot
server for "ether host 8:0:20:xx:xx:xx" (where you can get xx:xx:xx off
the ROM banner printed by the machine you're trying to boot).  Then,
when (note I don't say "if" :-) the boot attempt hangs, you can see
what kind of traffic it's generating, which should point you towards
the thing - or rather, the next thing - you didn't get set up right.

You can netboot the installer kernel, but that's most useful to install
NetBSD onto local disk.  If you want to actually _run_ it diskless, I
*think* you should just unpack the sets into the NFS root area by hand.

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