conf/48195: /var/db/mounttab error on diskless boot

[Harry Coin]

The following reply was made to PR conf/48195; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Harry Coin <harrycoin at qconline.com>
To: Brooks Davis <brooks at one-eyed-alien.net>
Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: conf/48195: /var/db/mounttab error on diskless boot
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 19:37:26 -0600

 Thanks very much for this!
 
 I'm able to PXE boot a diskless kernel, but I just keep getting 'Amnesiac' 
 and various gripes about unable to update (big list) due to RO root FS.
 
 I will ignore it then and continue to debug my setup.  I'm having problems 
 getting the initdiskless diskless_remount to nfs mount a remote etc 
 directory based on the ip address.  No need to reply, I'll post again if I 
 can't figure it out myself and have a specific error to report.
 
 One helpful item:  Some folks were complaining about getting a 
 'setrootbyname failed' error on a diskless machine.  I find that if I just 
 don't mention a / directory in my diskless machine's fstab, that error 
 doesn't appear.
 
 I wish there was some means to discern whether a bootup message is a 
 warning and the command in a script completed to some extent with a notice 
 of some failed secondary op (like updating /var/db/mounttab) and yet 
 returned an exit code of 0) or whether the message is an error and didn't 
 complete.
 
 My objective is not to have any memory disks on the diskless machines, 
 memory is at a premium while there is plenty of remote disk space (compute 
 bound diskless application using lotsa used computers CPU / memory only 
 doing a parallel processing thing).
 
 I'm somewhat new to Freebsd so sorry if this seems 'newbie' ish.
 
 Thanks for all the work on Freebsd, I hope to contribute once I get a 
 little better at all this.
 
 Harry