rpi4 network boot

[Matthew Grooms]

On 2/7/2021 2:00 PM, Klaus Küchemann wrote:
> Am 07.02.2021 um 20:19 schrieb Torfinn Ingolfsen 
> <torfinn.ingolfsen at getmail.no>:
>> I believe he is asking you to verify that the fstab file for the _client_ (aka the diskless machine your'e trying to boot) is correct. That file exists as
>> ${NFSROOTDIR}/etc/fstab  on the boot server.
>>
>> HTH
>> -- 
>> Torfinn Ingolfsen <torfinn.ingolfsen at getmail.no>
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> Yes, the fstab-setup is important…... but then I realized Matthew`s boot environment :
> He has u-boot sitting on the pxe-Server, whereas the eeprom was flashed for completely diskless netboot
> as a requirement .
> With that setup in fact we will end up in n infinite loop of an 'genet0: gen_intr2‘ -console-output,
> regardless of fstab or whatever configuration elsewhere I tried.
Thanks for testing and re-producing that. Corroborating test results 
were also posted by others in the FreeBSD forum thread I referenced earlier.
> I have now refreshed the eeprom to it’s default(where diskless pxe-boot is disabled )
> And again successfully net-booted (14_current in this case) :
>
> https://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=5917
>
> Since netboot from u-boot on the uSD requiresdonly 1 command by hand (load net0:/boot/kernel/kernel
> )(+ command :’boot’) and there’s no problem with the genet-driver I guess that
> It’s an issue of the pxe-flashed eeprom where we don’t yet know exactly what happens.

I have a slightly different take: The network device appears to work 
well initially when used by the eeprom and after the hand-off to u-boot. 
The FreeBSD genet driver generally works well unless the device is first 
used by eeprom/u-boot. I suspect that u-boot is performing some task 
that leaves the device in a state that is incompatible what FreeBSD 
expects and/or can work with. Perhaps there is a way to force some a 
full device reset of genet either before u-boot hands things off to 
FreeBSD or right after FreeBSD loads the genet driver? If so, maybe that 
would be worth trying, even as a hacky test, to see if it's the network 
device state that's wonky.

> So for now I guess netboot from uSD is a painless and well working setup,
> while to be honest:
> I don’t remember exactly at the moment how I figured to get it to work after trials&errors  :-) Ha Ha
> But I’ll leave the uSD untouched or copy the folder to have a point for a tutorial or so if someone is interested in.

Can that be done without human intervention? Perhaps with some sort of 
u-boot or EFI script that gets executed? If this method requires the 
user to enter a command to boot from the network, it's not an 
alternative to PXE.

Thanks,

-Matthew