From owner-freebsd-questions Tue May 30 10:16:35 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from milquetoast.cs.mcgill.ca (milquetoast.CS.McGill.CA [132.206.2.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9DAEE37BC90 for ; Tue, 30 May 2000 10:16:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mat@milquetoast.cs.mcgill.ca) Received: (from mat@localhost) by milquetoast.cs.mcgill.ca (8.9.3/8.9.3) id NAA28477; Tue, 30 May 2000 13:16:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 13:16:09 -0400 From: Mathew Kanner To: "James A. Mutter" Cc: mat@cs.mcgill.ca, gabriel_ambuehl@buz.ch, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Diskless Message-ID: <20000530131609.A28012@cs.mcgill.ca> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: James A. Mutter's message [FreeBSD Diskless] as of Tue, May 30, 2000 at 02:15:01AM -0500 Organization: SOCS, McGill University, Montreal, CANADA Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On May 30, James A. Mutter wrote: > > I was searching through the archives and I noticed your question about > diskless booting. I too am working on a solution with PXE and Intel > Pro100 cards. > > So far I've managed to use a combination of PXE and ISC's dhcp v3Beta > to load the "pxeloader", which in turn loads a kernel over NFS, which > finally mounts an NFS_ROOT partition. However, after the root partition > is mounted everything goes south. If I export a copy of the BSD root > filesystem (/bin /sbin /dev /var /tmp /dev /stand) from a Solaris box > nothing works, the kernel complains it can't find "/sbin/init" or > "/stand/sysinstall", the filesystem is export rw as > "/data/bsdfs". However if I export "/" from another BSD box everything > seems to work fine, this is not an acceptable solution though as I can't > have multiple boxes doing read/writes on the same root fs. > > As I've mentioned before I'm trying to work towards a solution where I > can: > > (a) boot "pxeloader" using PXE > (b) boot customized kernel > (c) run a scripted sysinstall for an automated installation. > > If anyone's ever user "boot net - install" and Jumpstart (Solaris Sparc) > you'll know exactly what I'm working towards. > > I guess I just wanted to share my experience with this PXE thing and > solicit any advice/experiences that others have had. If we can get this > right we've taken a huge step in remote management for FreeBSD (and other > Intel) servers. I'll contribute the little that I know. First of all, I've had no success with the NFS version of pxeloader. It works much better for me using the TFTP. Also, I've followed the directions in /usr/share/examples/diskless. Using the scheme suggested there, I export / /usr read-only. The rc.diskless{1,2} are responsible for making the right places rw using MFS mounts. I believe that in the examples directory there is a text discussing how to use DISKLESS setups for installation. I think that Matt Dillon calls this "templating". I don't actually export the root parition of server machine but a copy of it. When making this copy, don't forget to make stub directory entries for "/usr /var /tmp" to mount off of. If the "/usr" mount fails, you won't get access to the utilites /usr/{s}bin and the start-up sequence will fail with things like "find not found". You will also need a "/conf /conf/ME /conf/defaults /conf/defaults/etc" in the exported root. I'm currently working on what I think is a bug in the kernel part of BOOTP, it truncates to root path part of the BOOTP response. Until I figure out why, I'm using a shorter name for it. All in all, I'm *very* impressed with the direction that this is going, considering we're using featues that aren't really out there yet. --Mat > > -- > Jim To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message