From owner-freebsd-alpha  Sat May 15  8:46:46 1999
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Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 16:46:56 +0100 (BST)
From: Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com>
To: sthaug@nethelp.no
Cc: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: How difficult is it to make a netbootable installation?
In-Reply-To: <84709.926782605@verdi.nethelp.no>
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On Sat, 15 May 1999 sthaug@nethelp.no wrote:

> > > I have an Alphastation 200 here with no floppy. Thus I'd like to know
> > > how easy it would be to create install media that enables me to do the
> > > whole installation using Ethernet. The install would be to a 1 GB SCSI
> > > disk.
> >
> > You should be able to netboot the kernel inside the boot.flp image. You
> > will need to use vnconfig to get it out. We should probably arrange to
> > have useful netbootable kernels available in the release tree (maybe in
> > /kernels).
> 
> Thanks, this got me at least part of the way. I got it to load the kernel
> via tftp. Then it starts with:
> 
> bootstrap code read in
> base = 1f2000, image_start = 0, image_bytes = 5f1027
> initializing HWRPB at 2000
> initializing page table at 1e4000
> initializing machine state
> setting the affinity to the primary CPU
> jumping to bootstrap code
> 
> halted CPU 0
> 
> halt code = 2
> kernel stack not valid halt
> PC = 4
> boot failure
> 
> This is with the kernel from the 4.0-19990413-CURRENT snapshot at
> ftp.cdrom.com. I gunzipped the kernel (after extracting it from the
> boot.flp image with vnconfig), and got this file:
> 
> -rw-r--r--  1 sthaug  wheel  6230055 May 15 17:23 /tftpboot/kernel
> 
> The size is at least consistent with image_bytes = 5f1027.
> 
> Any ideas? TIA!

You need to arrange to load the alpha netboot program from tftp which will
then load the kernel via NFS. The file needed for tftp should be in
/boot/netboot in the release. I use the following dhcpd configuration to
netboot my alpha.  You should place the kernel in an NFS exported
directory and point the root-path at that directory.

option domain-name "nlsystems.com";
option domain-name-servers herring.nlsystems.com;
option routers 10.0.0.2;
subnet 10.0.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
	range 10.0.0.100 10.0.0.200;
	group {
		filename "netboot.alpha";
		host miata {
			hardware ethernet 00:00:f8:75:6d:01;
			fixed-address miata.nlsystems.com;
			option root-path "10.0.0.2:/c/export/miata";
		}
	}
}

--
Doug Rabson				Mail:  dfr@nlsystems.com
Nonlinear Systems Ltd.			Phone: +44 181 442 9037




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