FreeBSD 8.0: can't PXE Boot using nvidia nForce4 network card

[Pyun YongHyeon]

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 02:07:15PM +0100, Olivier Cochard-Labb? wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've got a PC which have 2 bugs with FreeBSD 8.0: It can't boot from
> USB (usb/139142) neither from PATA hard-drive (kern/139143).
> But I would boot this PC for giving acces to somes FreeBSD devs for debuging it:
> Then I've choose boot my buggy PC using PXE, then I've prepared a second PC with
> a DHCP/TFTP/NFS/serial-cable this bugguy PC.
> 
> I've posted my problem on the FreeBSD forum some weeks ago, but didn't
> found usefull help:
> http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=8324
> 
> The up-to-date 8.0-STABLE kernel boot fine from PXE/TFTP, but when it
> tries to mount the rootfilesystem from NFS it display an errror:
> 
>    Trying to mount root from nfs:10.0.0.1:/usr/tftpboot
>    nfs_diskless: no interface
>    ROOT MOUNT ERROR:
> 
> The network card is a NVIDIA nForce4 CK804 MCP8.
> 
> I've seen that the pxe loader populate correctly lot's of the needed
> boot variables (boot.netif.ip, boot.netif.netmask, boot.netif.gateway,
> etc...) but with the only expection of "boot.netif.name".
> It seems to have a problem in /usr/src/sys/nfsclient/nfs_diskless.c
> that can't set this variable.
> 
> Does some one have any clue for fixing this file ?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Olivier
> 
> PS: Here is the full verbose boot messages:
> 

[...]

> nfe0: <NVIDIA nForce4 CK804 MCP8 Networking Adapter> irq 21 at device
> 10.0 on pci0
> nfe0: Lazy allocation of 0x1000000 bytes rid 0x10 type 3 at 0x81000000
> nfe0: Reserved 0x1000000 bytes for rid 0x10 type 3 at 0x81000000
> nfe0: MII without any phy!
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Maybe this is the reason why you can't use NFS.
If your BIOS has an option that disables management feature
of ethernet controller try toggle the feature.

> device_attach: nfe0 attach returned 6