pxeboot does not work on Sun X4540

[Attila Nagy]

Attila Nagy wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to boot FreeBSD 8-CURRENT on a Sun X4540 (2xquad core 
> Opteron, 64 GB memory, 48 SATA disks (in fact 47, the 48th is a write 
> optimized SSD, because this box is a 7210 OpenStorage "appliance", 
> running OpenSolaris) on LSI controllers, nvidia NIC) from our boot 
> server without success.
>
> The PXE on the NIC downloads pxeboot with TFTP, but then gets stuck at 
> loading the kernel:
> http://people.fsn.hu/~bra/freebsd/20090107-freebsd-x4540/Screenshot-6.png
>
> pxeboot is configured to load the kernel via NFS (the default) and 
> according to the tcpdump output, the client (X4540) issues an NFS 
> GETPORT call and gets the response from the NFS server and then 
> nothing else happens.
>
> I've tried with LOADER_TFTP_SUPPORT=YES and the result is the same, 
> the only difference is that the machine stops sending packets after 
> the first TFTP read request (for /boot/boot.4th.split), which doesn't 
> exist, so the server sends the answer and then nothing comes back from 
> the X4540 box.
>
> It seems that it gets to send exactly one packet, then freezes.
>
> What else should be done to debug this problem?
>
> Thanks,
BTW, the last FreeBSD 8-CURRENT snapshot from december boots fine (at 
least I can get to sysinstall, I haven't yet tried installation, because 
I wouldn't like to touch the boot drives, which house the OpenSolaris 
image -that's why I want to boot from the net).

I would like to do a FreeBSD vs. OpenSolaris comparison on this machine, 
so please help. :)

Thanks,