netbooting 9.0-beta3 with serial console

[Nathan Whitehorn]

On 10/12/11 13:58, Michiel Boland wrote:
> Hi. How do I install 9.0-BETA3 on sparc64 via netbooting and a serial
> console?
>
> This used to work on previous releases simply by exporting the mounted
> cdrom over nfs, and having
> vfs.root.mountfrom="ufs:/dev/md0"
> in /tftpboot/boot/loader.conf.local
>
> But there is no longer an mfsroot on the dvd or bootonly images, so the
> boot fails with
>
> Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/md0 []...
> mountroot: waiting for device /dev/md0 ...
> Mounting from ufs:/dev/md0 failed with error 19.

There's no longer a special root, so just netbooting in the regular way 
should work.

> the system will then continue booting:
>
> Trying to mount root from nfs: []...
> NFS ROOT: 192.168.61.11:/cdrom
> gem0: link state changed to DOWN
> gem0: link state changed to UP
> /etc/rc.initdiskless: cannot create /dev/null: Read-only file system
> ps: /dev/null: No such file or directory
> /etc/rc: cannot create /dev/null: Read-only file system
> /etc/rc: cannot create /dev/null: Read-only file system

It looks like rc.diskless has failed you here, and somewhat broken 
devfs, so there's likely a bug there which should be looked into. If you 
just want to test the installer, you can make a netboot environment by 
doing:

mkdir /path/to/nfs/export
cd /path/to/nfs/export
tar xvzf /cdrom/usr/freebsd-dist/*.txz
cp /cdrom/etc/rc.local etc

and then booting from there, which will be read-write. I'll try to find 
out what goes wrong when FreeBSD netboots from read-only media.
-Nathan