Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 08:49:56 -0800 (PST) From: Doug Ambrisko <ambrisko@whistle.com> To: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: netboot & ELF kernels Message-ID: <199901141650.IAA43247@whistle.com> In-Reply-To: <199901141510.JAA86132@jake.lodgenet.com> from "Eric L. Hernes" at "Jan 14, 99 09:10:26 am"
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Eric L. Hernes writes: | Luigi Rizzo writes: | >A few comments on netboot. Recently, erich@lodgenet.com | >contributed netboot support for "fxp" cards. The msg was posted on some | >freebsd list about 1 month ago, and the file to look for is "nbfxp.tgz". Yep saw that. | Yea, that's right, although it's the netboot infrastructure, not the | fxp specifics (obviously). I talked to Mike Smith on the future of | netbooting when the 3-stage boot was still in early developoment. There | is some code in the new 3rd stage that looks like it's there for netboot; | but I'm not sure whether it's functional or not. >From my understanding is that we needed a 3 stage boot since we ran out of room in the boot block. We have a lot more space in the rom. Note I'm not saying I don't like the new features in the 3 stage boot. We don't have as much of a space constraint in the netboot rom. It would be nice to have unified loader code though. | I was kind of figuring that the current bootroms would get the 3rd stage | boot loader, which would in turn fetch the real kernel. | | Supporting any card that has a FreeBSD driver isn't that tough, you don't | really need programming specs other than the driver source (although | it is nice). Tricker is actually burning the flash image. The Nilo project is taking this one step further and they plan to use the Linux network drivers right from the kernel sources. This way once a driver is in Linux then it will be available in for Nilo | >Having tried both the tftp and nfs method, i prefer the latter a lot | >because it means i don't have to cnfigure another service (TFTP) on the | >server: with the current FreeBSD's netboot, you can supply all | >parameters with bootp (which you'd need anyways -- or replace it with | >DHCP i guess) and download the kernel with NFS (which your server | >probably already has). | | I'd have to agree with the bootp/nfs scheme. I use NFS enough that I'm | somewhat familiar with the errors it gives; but everytime something | goes wrong with tftp, I end up groveling through the man-pages and | tcpdump ;-) Not always ... there are a lot more "free" bootp/tftp clients out there then bootp/nfs servers. What about doing a net boot of a windows machine and using sharity light (rumba) to get the rootfs on top of a mfs root in the netbooted kernel. There are reasons why I like this. Not to mention that DEC Alpha firmare can netboot via tftp, I recall Sun uses tftp then there are various network things that like tftp. BTW there is no reason the etherboot package can't use nfs again. It's just that the Linux guys removed it. Note the Etherboot package was derived from the FreeBSD netboot code so it would be fairly easy to add in. Doug A. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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