Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 18:56:33 +0100 (CET) From: "Hartmann, O." <ohartman@klima.physik.uni-mainz.de> To: John Hay <jhay@icomtek.csir.co.za> Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 5.0-CURRENT diskless boot recognition Message-ID: <20030311184951.I36140@klima.physik.uni-mainz.de> In-Reply-To: <20030311173050.GA54800@zibbi.icomtek.csir.co.za> References: <20030311150056.K12960@edda.physik.uni-mainz.de> <20030311173050.GA54800@zibbi.icomtek.csir.co.za>
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On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, John Hay wrote: :>> :>> As I posted prior to this question, I have problems in getting diskless :>> started with 5.0-Current as cvsupdated today. The problem is still the same :>> and after a night of hairloosing work I think I got closer to the problem. :>> :>> We use PXE as bootstrap environment, isc-dhcp and a read-only disk partition :>> /usr/diskless conatining for each architecture we boot diskless its appropriate :>> directory. The diskless kernels are compiled with individual 'ident Marker', :>> have options NFS_ROOT, MD_ROOT, UNIONFS, PSEUDOFS and device md. :>> The whole setup is as described in /etc/rc.d/initdiskless with special :>> /conf-dir entries and this scheme works perfect under FreeBSD 4.7. :> :>I don't think you need MD_ROOT or UNIONFS. I also have BOOTP, :>BOOTP_NFSROOT and BOOTP_NFSV3. I do not have BOOTP and the other BOOTP_XXX options. When enabling this, I fall into trouble and the kernel panics. As you can see, the BOOTP-stage is left behind when the problems I have occurs. BOOTP should be necessary for loading and bootstrapping, but the kernel was already running when the fault happens. :> :>> FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT seems to have problems within its bootstrap process :>> to recognize that it is a diskless system. :>> :>> After the diskless station got its IP, loaded and booted the kernel I see this :>> on screen: :>> :>> Mounting root from nfs: :>> NF ROOT: MY.IP : /usr/diskless/xterm :>> Loading configuration files. :>> Starting file system checks: :>> mount: / : unknown special file or filesystem :> :>Do you have a mount point for / in fstab? I have something like this: :> :>my.nfs.ip.number:/export/current / nfs ro 0 0 No, I do not. I tried this, but without success. The problem is, as far as I can follow up, that the booted kernl/system does not know to be a diskless machine, so it goes on in initializing itself with the normal scripts and not with those especially made for diskless booting. :> :>> Mounting NFS file system:. :>> eval: /etc/rc.d/cleanvar: Permission denied. :>> . :>> . :>> . :>> After the last message a lot of deny error occur. :>> I modified all the diskless-scripts in rc.d with my own echo :>> commands to check which one gets involved, but none of them :>> get touched! The above process looks identical of what a :>> normal standalone machine does when booting. No wonder when :>> diskless does not work when the init process does not recognize :>> that it is booting diskless. :> :>The only mods that I made was to mount /var over NFS and not as a RAM :>disk. It would be nice if there was a knob to select that. :-) :> :>> :>> We do not use BOOTP and I do not know whether FBSD 5.X does only support this :>> scheme. We would like to stay with the NFS process. But I think technically :>> this can not be the problem, because after the station has already booted :>> the kernel it doesnt care what mechanism it booted from. NFS is the dominating :>> facility and I could see, the root partition got mounted as expected. :> :>Remember BOOTP is just a subset of DHCP. Actually the BOOTP in the kernel :>will first try dhcp requests before fallng back, IIRC. And it seems to :>need it in -current while it didn't when I last did a -stable diskless :>setup. If this is really the case, how prevent the kernel from panicing? What is the benefit of doing a bootp-bootstrap the new way compared against the way it was done in 4.X? If bootp is used, I need to reconfigure the whole stuff, especially the DHCP-server and this is not a nice work to do ... :-( :> :>> Can anyone help? Do I mark each kernel with 'ident DISKLESS' to give the init :>> process any idea what it should do? :> :>I use DLESS, so it shouldn't be necesary. :-) :> :>Well I learned a lot by watching tcpdump while it is all happening. :-) :> :>John :>-- :>John Hay -- John.Hay@icomtek.csir.co.za / jhay@FreeBSD.org :> Thanks. Oliver -- MfG O. Hartmann ohartman@mail.physik.uni-mainz.de ------------------------------------------------------------------ Systemadministration des Institutes fuer Physik der Atmosphaere (IPA) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz Becherweg 21 55099 Mainz Tel: +496131/3924662 (Maschinenraum) Tel: +496131/3924144 (Buero) FAX: +496131/3923532 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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