pxeboot, TFTP only, NFS MOUNT RPC error: 60, timeout

[Rek Jed]

Erik Norgaard wrote:
> OK, two things remain: Are you sure that it doesn't correctly fetch 
> the kernel with tftp and then the kernel tries to mount a root device 
> with nfs?
When I build the pxeloader with LOADER_TFTP_SUPPORT=YES it will fetch 
the kernel from tftp just fine, but after the NFS gracefully times out.  
It will also fetch & mount the root device from tftp ok.  It's just a 
bit annoying that I have to wait 2 extra minutes every time I need to 
install a box (I do this quite often), and look for workarounds for 
something that should "just work".  But then, I'm a sysadmin not a 
developer so it might be easy for me to say.  I cannot actually fix it 
myself.
> If the kernel is compiled with the slightest mention of nfs as root 
> device it will use nfs, no matter that you have specified otherwise in 
> loader.conf. The generic kernel has NFS_ROOT and NFS_CLIENT, since 
> your root device is not NFS then you can leave out both. I recall 
> having problems leaving in NFS_CLIENT although NFS_ROOT was not included.
I don't bother compiling a kernel for this at the moment.   I just 
copied the contents of /boot from a FreeBSD CD to the root of my tftp 
server.  Then I copied the custom build loader files so that I can boot 
from tftp instead of nfs:

boot0
boot1
boot2
loader.conf
loader.rc
mbr
pxeboot

Then I mount the stock mfsroot and copy my install.cfg over to script 
sysinstall.  I've actually got a script that I can use to easily update 
install.cfg when needed.

The idea behind all this is to keep it as simple to setup as possible so 
that me and my fellow network engineers at work can use this on their 
laptops without spending too much time on setting it up.  This way if we 
need to install/re-install a box on a clients site we just rock up, run 
a few commands or a script to set the laptop in jumpstart mode (once the 
main thing has been setup it's just a matter of reconfiguring an 
interface and starting a few services), plug it in to the box, netboot 
and while the box is reinstalling we can have a chat with the client, 
see how things are going, look good and provide a better service.   This 
also means that we always start with a machine that is in a know state.  
It's something that is almost impossible to achieve when installing by 
hand as everyone seems to do it differently.

I'm happy to share my docs once I've ironed it all out and tested properly.


Cheers,


Jedrek