Strange problem with pxeboot

Erik Norgaard norgaard at locolomo.org
Wed Nov 24 04:27:56 PST 2004


Hi,

Sorry - I have no more descriptive subject because this is really strange:

I have set up a server to serve clients booting with pxeboot and 
fetching kernel and a memory disk root file system with tftp. So far so 
good. What is strange is this:

1) If the local harddrive (which contains an old FreeBSD 4.9) is 
installed, the client correctly configures the ethernet card (vr0) and 
tries to mount a root file system using NFS - but the whole idea was to 
avoid using NFS at all.

If I leave the root-path unset in the dhcpd.conf the client will try to 
mount the root file system from <next-server>:/pxeroot

2) If I remove the harddrive, then it mounts the memory file system as 
root file system and launches sysinstall (which is what I really want) - 
however, it fails to initialize the network card, and there is 
(obviously) no disk to install on.

the ethernet driver is compiled into the kernel - no modules need to be 
loaded, these are my loader files:

loader.rc:
include /boot/loader.4th
start

loader.conf:
init_path="/sbin/init:/stand/sysinstall"
rootfs_load="YES"
rootfs_name="/boot/mfsroot"
rootfs_type="mfs_root"
autoboot_delay=5

boot/ on tftp server:
defaults        kernel          loader.gz       pxeboot
device.hints    loader.4th      loader.rc       support.4th
frames.4th      loader.conf     mfsroot

Any hints would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, Erik
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