pxeboot

[davidcollins001 at gmail.com]

On 30/07/2008, David Collins <davidcollins001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have been trying to get pxeboot to work, so far with no luck. I have
> a dhcp/tftp server set up and I am able to push pxeboot across the
> network, so I assume that is all ok. NFS is also setup, at least I was
> getting nfs errors that I don't have anymore. I copied the contents of
> the 7.0 cd into the my tftpboot folder and changed the contents for
> loader.conf and loader.rc

Hi,

I have been playing around all week and I finally have some sort of
result. I am trying to pxeboot an ibm transnote (thinkpad), when I try to
netboot with the power plugged in it starts to load the kernel then
quickly reboots everytime. I don't think this is to do with the
mfsroot gzip bug since I don't get that far - I think it maybe when it
is loading the kernel, I am not sure I can't see any debugging
messages they disappear from the screen quickly. I noticed that when I
unplug the power and run from battery I am able to pxeboot everytime!
Can anyone shed some light on why this happens? It isn't really a
problem it is just an annoyance!

Strangly enough if I copy the contents of the 7.0 cd to my exported
directory and pxe boot from that (ie with mfsroot still gzipped) it
boots right into the "cd" - no mfsroot bug here? I have tried this
with 5.1 6.2 and 7.0 and they all act the same way.

What I am stuck with now is when I modify loader.rc to something like
the following:

 /usr/local/export# cat freebsd/boot/loader.rc

echo Loading /boot/loader.rc
load /boot/kernel/kernel

set mfsroot_type="mfs_root"
set mfsroot_name="/boot/mfsroot"
set vfs.root.mountfrom="ufs:/dev/md0c"

load -t mfs_root /boot/mfsroot

autoboot 5


The booting computer hangs after it tries to install the acpi.ko
module. Does anyone know how I can get around this?

Thanks
David