Netbooting issues linux server, fbsd client

[Andreas Tobler]

Hello all,

first post here from my side.

I'm in contact with Peter but maybe one of you has an idea what I'm missing.

I have an Al and a ti book. Both are not ready to run fbsd out of the 
box. So I decided to netboot the two to save some disk headache issues. 
(The Albook is my production machine with darwin on.)

Ok, I set up a linuxppc dhcp/bootp/nfs server to boot them. This works 
so far after some initial understanding problems.

Now, I took the miniinst.iso, burnt a cd and unpacked the pkg's on the 
nfs server. Chown'ed everthing to root:root and exported it with 
rw,no_root_squash (similar to, if not equal, -maproot=root on bsd).

With the kernel from the miniinst.iso I can boot and I see that the boot 
process is able to write to the nfs export. Unfortunately the Al book 
crashes right after invoking devd. The tibook on the otherside does not 
understand the usb, neither built in nor external.

Peter posted test kernel named kernel.tibook, this kernel recognizes the 
Albook's usb and I can type from an external kbd.
The odd thing is with this kernel that I can not write to the nfs 
export. The config on this export is the same for both kernels.

I created an etc/fstab with the following entry:

proc    /proc   procfs  rw      0       0
192.168.225.25:/mnt/slice2/export/fbsd/root / nfs rw 0 0

The rc.conf in etc looks like this:

defaultrouter="192.168.225.1"
hostname="titanium.andreas.nets"
ifconfig_gem0="inet 192.168.225.9  netmask 255.255.255.0"
inetd_enable="YES"
nfs_client_enable="YES"

Now my problem, is there something missing in Peter's kernel? Or does 
something has changed since dec 04 in regard of nfs and write permissions?

I have a chicken and egg problem, as soon as I can log in from remote, I 
could try building my own kernels but for this I need first physical 
access to the machine where I want to run fbsd on, to configure an 
account and network access(*). The tibook boots, but I can not enter 
anything on the kbd. The Al book boots, I can type but I can not save 
anything on the nfs.


(*) right, I'm a newbie on FreeBSD ;)

Has anybody a comment or an advice on how to go on?

As said, I'm in contact with Peter, but I guess he will answer when I'm 
asleep :)

Thanks in advance.

Andreas