pxeboot.bs and vlan tagging

[Erik Nørgaard]

On 06/02/2012 16:35, Rick Miller wrote:

> We are PXE booting into FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE to perform system builds.
> The pxeboot.bs file was recompiled with TFTP support.  8.2-RELEASE
> builds were working fine until we attempted a build on bare metal in
> an environment that utilizes vlan tagging.  When the system loaded the
> pxeboot.bs file it prompted that a disk containing the mfsroot.gz be
> inserted.

Hi, a few questions:

1) do you use tftp or nfs? if you built pxeboot with tftp, did you also 
build the kernel with tftp?

I assume that you want to use tftp since you fetch a memory file system 
as root device.

2) do you fetch the kernel successfully?

When using tftp, The kernel and kernel modules are fetched before the 
memory file system, so do pxeboot fetch the kernel but not the mfsroot?

The reason for these questions is that your problem may be with the 
kernel and kernel modules and not pxeboot. Just to be sure.

> I have a couple of questions that I am hoping I can use to glean a
> proper solution:
>
> 1) Does the 8.2-RELEASE pxeboot.bs source code support use of vlan tagging?
> 2) Can I get vlan tagging support with newer 8.2 code?
> 3) Will the 9.0-RELEASE code have better support for vlan tagging and
> can I use it to build an 8.2-RELEASE system?

I did a grep in the source and it seems there is a kernel module for 
vlan tagging, if you load the kernel succesfully it may be a question of 
getting that module loaded as well, or rebuild the kernel. But I can't 
give a better answer.

My best guess is not to rely on vlan tagging unless you can configure 
that on the hardware. Or, normally there is a default vlan that 
corresponds to no tag. If you can configure that for pxe and use tagging 
for the other networks.

BR, Erik

-- 
M: +34 666 334 818
T: +34 915 211 157