From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jan 19 22:23:22 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D78116A4D6 for ; Mon, 19 Jan 2004 22:23:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from web11609.mail.yahoo.com (web11609.mail.yahoo.com [216.136.129.38]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6F15243D1F for ; Mon, 19 Jan 2004 22:23:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from pschmied@yahoo.com) Message-ID: <20040120062321.37190.qmail@web11609.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [216.161.218.37] by web11609.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Mon, 19 Jan 2004 22:23:21 PST Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 22:23:21 -0800 (PST) From: Peter Schmiedeskamp To: questions@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Subject: PXE boot and no kernel/init messages X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 06:23:22 -0000 Hello, I'm writing in hopes that someone will recognize the problem I'm seeing and point me in the right direction. I'm currently working on setting up a network booting environment similar to what is described in The Network People, Inc.'s "FreeBSD 5 PXE boot recipe" (http://www.tnpi.biz/computing/freebsd/pxe-netboot.shtml). I'm deviating from the instructions in that I'm pulling my mfsroot image from the server via TFTP rather than NFS. Here's a brief description of what I'm attempting to do: 1. PXE environment loads a TFTP enabled "pxeboot" --- works 2. Fetch kernel from TFTP --- works 3. Fetch custom MFSROOT via TFTP --- works 4. Boot --- have encountered problems here, but also see limited success (see below). Step 4 is where I seem to have problems. If I use an uncompressed mfsroot.gz file that I extract from FreeBSD's mfsroot.flp, I can boot and I eventually see the familiar installation screen. However, no output is written to the screen between the time the kernel loads and the time sysinstall appears on the screen. I suspect the console is only being initialized as a function of the (curses?) library that sysinstall uses? When I use a custom mfsroot (I don't actually intend to run sysinstall at all), I don't see any status messages written to the screen despite the fact that my mfsroot is pulled across the wire properly and that the kernel appears to have loaded. Also, I can boot using kern.flp and my custom mfsroot and I see both kernel and init messages posted to the screen. But nothing when I boot the same kernel/mfsroot over PXE. Is there some way that I must initialize the console to see the normal boot messages? Thank you in advance. -Peter __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus