Hi Michael, et al,
"Michael R. Schwarzbach" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hi *, > > I have successfully installed a debian with debian's boot-floppies via > TFTP on i386. As already mentioned in this bug, there is a tool called > "mknbi-linux" witch appends initrds to a tftpimage. "mknbi-linux is part > of the debian package "mknbi" (Create tagged images for Etherboot or > Netboot). If you add the root.bin to the existing tftpboot.img with > "mknbi-linux" the boot-floppies do their work. Thanks for documenting this, and for preparing a patch for the tftpboot.img on x86 for boot-floppies. However, I'm not sure if this 'mknbi' procedure is general for all x86 network boot methods, besides the Etherboot and Netboot you cite. I have a good deal of experience in booting (normal Debian systems, not Debian Installer) cluster nodes with Debian using PXE-based (Preboot eXecution Environment) Intel Boot Agents (firmware v. 4.0.22 for those who really care) on EEPro 100+/M NIC's, however no experience with network boot on Etherboot or Netboot. [1] Unfortunately, the procedure you describe above does not seem to work with my PXE-based cards, though that might not be particularly surprising, since 'mknbi' appears to be specifically formulated for the Etherboot/Netboot projects. When my node retrieves the mknbi-modified 'tftpboot.img' (boot-floppies 3.0.23) image from my tftp server, (downloads successfully, tested with separate atftp client, then md5sum'd images on both ends of connection) I get a screenful of colored image squares, and absolutely no boot progress. I can successfully network boot the boot-floppy kernel (non-modified x86 'tftpboot.img'), however, this image kernel panics when it cannot find the root filesystem. Of course, this is completely expected, since no root filesystem (initrd, NFS-Root, or otherwise) was specified. I just mention the scenario as demonstration that the kernel itself successfully network boots with my PXE-based configuration. > I have writte a patch to the "tftpboot.sh" 1.25 that I got via CVS. The > patch is appended to the mail. boot-floppies should add a > build-dependency for "mknbi", and the skript should be working on future > boot-floppies. > Then the tftpboot.img boots with etherboot- and netboot-roms. (I've only > tested etherboot). If you wanna boot these images with a 3com rom, you > need to extend it with "imggen", as I mentioned before (I've tested this > one too). I'll contact the "mknbi" maintainer to include it in his package. Other folks (in the discussion of the bug) have reported success with using a network boot of the tftpboot.img, and then mounting boot-floppiy's root.bin using NFS-Root (presumably after gunzipping, loopback mounting, then NFS exporting). As mentioned above, I've done a lot of NFS-Root boots of nodes (regular Debian root, not boot-floppy's root), but as far as I can see from the kernel-configuration, there's no included support for NFS-Root (nor would I really expect there to be in a general distribution boot-floppy kernel). However, this implies, I believe, that any user would have to roll their own boot-floppy kernel to use x86 network boot with NFS-Root, which seems to be asking a lot of them. In fact, I did just this (rolled my own boot kernel by adding compiled-in support for CONFIG_ROOT_NFS, CONFIG_IP_PNP_DHCP, and, specific to my NIC, CONFIG_EEPRO100 to the general boot-floppy kernel config) and performed a completely successful PXE-based network boot of the Debian installer, using NFS-Root. Everything installed great, and Woody seems to be really shaping up. However, IMHO, the above process involves more sophisticated knowledge of such issues than I would imagine acceptable for a general-use tftpboot procedure on i386 (as well as requiring an NFS server, in addition to just tftp and dhcp/bootp servers). So, unless I'm mistaken, I'm afraid it might be a little premature to consider x86 network boot installation as a solved problem. I'd very much like to help out with making x86 tftpboot a reality for all network boot clients, as convenient to use as network boot is on other architectures (though that's probably a little harder due to really bad BIOS's in the x86 world), and I think I have enough experience to contribute (as well as a ready supply of machines on which to test). Does anyone, more familiar with boot-floppies than I am, have suggestions or guidance to direct this effort? > sorry for taking so long and missing woody-freeze :( > I've been on a longer vacation. > > Regards > Michael Thanks so much to the entire boot-floppies team! Take care, Daniel PS Please cc me on replies. [1] The real advantage, from my standpoint, of using PXE-based boards is that there's no need for floppy-disks or custom-made boot-ROMs that I believe many folks use to boot with Etherboot/Netboot. The downside is that the PXE NIC's cost a little more, but generally PXE only adds ~ $5 to the cost of good quality 3Com or Intel NIC's (I got mine for ~ $30 in quantity). Other folks use LinuxBios (www.linuxbios.org) for similar benefits, with the additional advantage of a generally more reliable transmission of the kernel boot image than PXE (though PXE can get around this with multicast tftpd, such as that provided, experimentally, by more recent atftpd) when large numbers of clients simultaneously network boot. However, LinuxBios must specifically support one's motherboard chipset, since it fully replaces the default bios, and currently only some chipsets are supported. I'm looking forward to playing around more with LinuxBios myself, in the future. -- Daniel A. Freedman Laboratory for Atomic and Solid State Physics Department of Physics Cornell University -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
