From owner-freebsd-ia32@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jun 24 17:03:21 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-ia32@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-ia32@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8CE4D16A41C; Fri, 24 Jun 2005 17:03:21 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from B.Candler@pobox.com) Received: from orb.pobox.com (orb.pobox.com [207.8.226.5]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1BAC343D48; Fri, 24 Jun 2005 17:03:21 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from B.Candler@pobox.com) Received: from orb (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by orb.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 244A8276A; Fri, 24 Jun 2005 13:03:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from bloodhound.noc.clara.net (bloodhound.noc.clara.net [195.8.70.207]) (using TLSv1 with cipher RC4-MD5 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by orb.sasl.smtp.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C7C7A8E; Fri, 24 Jun 2005 13:03:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Candler To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, freebsd-ia32@freebsd.org Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 18:03:27 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.8 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200506241803.28436.B.Candler@pobox.com> Cc: alfred@freebsd.org Subject: pxeboot, NFS and root-path: bug or documentation error? X-BeenThere: freebsd-ia32@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD on the IA-32 platform List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 17:03:21 -0000 I have been setting up a pxeboot "jumpstart" environment for FreeBSD 4.11, following the instructions at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/pxe/ Rather than build pxeboot like this: # rm -rf /usr/obj/* # cd /usr/src/sys/boot # make # cp /usr/src/sys/boot/i386/pxeldr/pxeboot /usr/tftpboot I just copied /boot/pxeboot from the FreeBSD-4.11 CD-ROM. Otherwise I followed the instructions very closely. The pxeboot client machine is a Compaq ProLiant DL380. On first attempt, it got as far as pxeboot starting, and then: pxe_open: server addr: 192.168.0.1 pxe_open: server path: /pxeroot pxe_open: gateway ip: 0.0.0.0 Booting [kernel]... can't load 'kernel' can't load 'kernel.old' And my NFS server logs a failed attempt to mount /pxeroot: Jun 24 16:32:40 sr-mon-00 mountd[642]: mount request from 192.168.0.240 for non existent path /pxeroot Jun 24 16:32:49 sr-mon-00 last message repeated 59 times This is strange; I thought that at this stage pxeboot would be pulling across the kernel and ramdisk via TFTP from /usr/tftpboot, although the documentation is far from clear. pxeboot(8) says: pxeboot recognizes next-server and option root-path directives as the server and path to NFS mount for file requests, respectively, or the server to make TFTP requests to. (Erm, so exactly how do I choose whether to use NFS or to use TFTP for the next stage?) Anyway, assuming that I'm forced to use NFS at this point, I added another DHCP option: option root-path "192.168.0.1:/usr/tftpboot"; This option is not shown in the example dhcpd.conf in pxeboot(8), nor in the article referred to above. However, if I also put an entry in the NFS server's /etc/hosts file for the client DHCP address, it then works properly. So the question is: when pxeboot runs on the client, is it able to fetch loader.rc, the kernel and ramdisk via TFTP, or only via NFS? If it's only NFS, then I think the pxeboot(8) manpage, and the pxeboot article, ought to be updated. If it *can* use TFTP, does anyone have any suggestions for what I was doing wrong? Regards, Brian Candler.