PXEBOOT/TFTPBOOT + big MD_ROOT problem

[Emmanuel Chriqui]

> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : owner-freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-
> hackers at freebsd.org] De la part de Marc Olzheim
> Envoyé : mardi 19 avril 2005 21:06
> À : Emmanuel Chriqui
> Cc : freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org; freebsd-stable at freebsd.org
> Objet : Re: PXEBOOT/TFTPBOOT + big MD_ROOT problem
> 
> On Tue, Apr 19, 2005 at 09:52:07AM +0200, Emmanuel Chriqui wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm trying to make very big MD_ROOT (300MB) sent using PXEBOOT+TFTPBOOT.
> No
> > NFS.
> 
> Any reasons for not using NFS ?
Yes. Mainly : similar system already working great under linux for two
years, NFS heavy traffic problems making data loss so difficult to solve (at
least under Linux), cheap memory, better server independence when he got his
system (tftp server shut down after the client servers got theirs images).

> 
> > I use i386/5.4RC2/TFTPD/PXEBOOT+TFTPBOOT .
> > (same pb with a 5.3).
> >
> > Am I missing something obvious?
> 
> I'm not sure. tftp itself is able to handle 32MB+ files, but maybe the
> loader isn't.
TFTP linux->FreeBSD, FreeBsd->FreeBSD, FreeBSD->Linux ok for 500MB, 1GB,
1,5GB, works ok (well... at least on our servers..).

> 
> A workaround, no using NFS, could be to tftp a second filesystem image
> on boot and mount that from the root filesyste
This is roughly how it works under our linux servers, webservers, etc... I
was hoping to avoid that approach (less work.. less maintenance..). 

Am I the only one on earth to need a big MFSROOT ??? 
:)

Emmanuel.