PXE Boot FreeBSD with Etherboot

[Danny Braniss]

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> On Fri, Aug 12, 2005 at 10:26:28AM +0300, Danny Braniss wrote:
> > > > It seems there are some problems with using pxeboot in combination wi=
> th
> > > > the network boot code from the etherboot project.  I have tried many
> > > > combinations of options with no success.  The result is very similar =
> to
> > > > the following photo I found:
> > > >=20
> > > > http://photos.night-shade.org.uk/photo.php?photo=3D6364
> > > >=20
> > > > I have tried it both on my local machine and in vmware with the same
> > > > result.  It seems that somehow etherboot is not setting up the
> > > > environment the way pxeboot expects it too.  Now the native pxe boot
> > > > code in vmware does load pxeboot correctly and I have successfully
> > > > booted freebsd in vmware, however I can't get the pxe boot code on my
> > > > network card to load at all, hence my need for etherboot.  Also, both
> > > > pxeboot from FreeBSD 4.11 and 6.0-BETA2 crash the same way.  I'm
> > > > assuming this is really a bug in etherboot, but I'm not sure how to g=
> et
> > > > a crash dump to play with.  With vmware, it seems like I should be ab=
> le
> > > > to save a memory image to examine, but I'm not sure how to do that.
> > > > Any ideas on a fix for this?
> > >=20
> > > Just my experience. I never handled to successfully pxeboot FreeBSD.
> >=20
> > pxeboot works fine! i have some 50 hosts pxeboot'ing that say so.
> >=20
> > it's etherboot loading pxeboot that does not work.
> 
> I do believe that the bugs in etherboot, and it should be fixed, but
> there may also be a workaround that could be added to pxeboot to make it
> work until etherboot is fixed.  Now etherboot loading pxelinux has
> always worked find.  pxelinux then uses the pxe environment to load it's
> configuration environment, plus your choice of a tagged kernel so it
> should have what it takes to load freebsd, even if it's not compliant
> with the spec.  If I could just find a way to get a dump of the
> environment of etherboot+pxeboot, either using vmware or my pc, I think
> that would be the best clue as to the problem in etherboot.

in my case it was etherboot which i couldn't get to work (it is a National something
or other on a PCengine)

danny