PXE boot / BTX Halt

Jason Taylor jason at infinitebubble.com
Wed Dec 29 05:12:02 PST 2004


I'm trying to set up a few diskless workstations using some old 
hardware.  I've tried four different boxes for clients ranging from a 
P-133 to a P-200.  I did use the same Realtek 8139 based NIC in all 4 
boxes, but I don't think that's the problem.  They all get to the point 
where they grab pxeboot via tftp and then a message like (these are not 
the actual values):

BXT loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01

int=0000000d   err=00000000   efl=00030246   eip=0000249a
eax=00002025   ebx=00000004   ecx=00002000   edx=0000a654
esi=000008d5   edi=0006290c   ebp=00001516   esp=000014e0
cs=f000   ds=ede1   es=ede1   fs=0000   gs=0000   ss=ede1

cs:eip=0f 20 dd 81 e5 00 f0 0f-20 c2 0f 01 e0 a8 01 75
        08 80 c2 fe e8 53 ff eb-21 0f 20 e0 a9 30 00 75
ss:esp=0c 29 06 00 d5 08 c0 00-16 15 00 00 00 15 00 00
        04 00 00 00 54 a6 00 00-04 00 00 00 25 a6 00 00
BTX Halted

Three of the four reboot immediately thereafter.  The other one just 
sits there, so I can get the real values if that'd help solve the problem.

I'm using the instructions from 
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2004/09/09/diskless_server.html and 
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2004/09/30/diskless_clients.html except 
I left all the 4th files in /diskless_ro/boot alone and did not create 
my own loader.rc.  I'll revisit that step if I can get past this current 
problem.

Also, I'm using a boot floppy image from http://rom-o-matic.net/5.3.9/

For the server I'm using a Dell OptiPlex G150.  Using another identical 
machine with its built-in NIC and MBA/PXE software, everything works 
(after changing the MAC in dhcpd.conf of course).

I also tried an image from http://rom-o-matic.net/5.2.5/ (no PXE image 
option in this version) and made the dhcpd.conf and /etc/export changes 
to load /diskless_ro/boot/kernel/kernel directly.  The kernel seems to 
load, but then just hangs.  I'm sure this is at least partly due to the 
fact that I didn't compile in device hints.  I haven't gone further down 
this path because I'd really like to go with PXE and pxeboot if possible.

All pointers, hints, RTFMs, etc. will be greatly appreciated.


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