Hi all, because pongo.verwaltung.uni-mainz.de (see: w.d.o/ports/mips) has a problem with its SCSI controller it was ofline for quite a long time. Now I finaly found the time to try a diskless Debian install. It worked -- nearly.
I used bootfloppies 3.0.15 from dists/woody/disks-mips/current, set up a bootp/tftp server on an Debian i386 potato box and could easlily start the initial install. I was supprised that bootfloppies support the install on nfs-root. The scripts copied the base packages onto the nfs-mounted root, but then dpkg --install failed, because it could not get a lock on the nfs mounted filesystem. I remembered to have seen this problem years ago on an i386 box with nfs root. the nfs-root code did not support nfs locking. So I tried to link /var/lib/dpkg/lock to a file in the ramdisk and then I could install all the base packages. After restoring the lockfile I could reboot from nfs and continue the installation. This time the locking worked and I finished the installation without a problem. I did not try to install an X-server. However it took me some time find out the correct settings in the boot prom. So here are the settings that worked for me: setenv SystemPartition bootp(): setenv OSLoader linux.pongo setenv OSLoadPartition /dev/nfs setenv OSLoadOptions ip=bootp Perhaps these hints could go into the Installation Howto. Also pongo can be marked availlable on ports/mips again. Christoph
