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Date:      Fri, 03 Aug 2001 15:19:55 -0400
From:      "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM>
To:        Chris Dillon <cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us>
Cc:        freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: sis0 problems sending out zeros. 
Message-ID:  <200108031919.f73JJtn73678@whizzo.transsys.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 03 Aug 2001 13:30:24 CDT." <Pine.BSF.4.32.0108031320010.79911-100000@mail.wolves.k12.mo.us> 
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.32.0108031320010.79911-100000@mail.wolves.k12.mo.us> 

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> On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Louis A. Mamakos wrote:
> 
> > FYI, I was able to get the board to net-boot using PXE, and
> > running diskless using NFS to install software on the CF disk.
> 
> I just got my net4501 in the other day, and I was thinking of doing
> the same thing to get FreeBSD onto a 64MB CF card I have.  Do you have
> any documentation of the steps you took to do this, or have a pointer
> to other existing documentation?

I'm going to try to put something together on a web page when I have
a chance, but here's the quick version, in no particular order:

- I started with the 'mkflash' shell script, and hacked around with
it.  Essentially, it chdir's into the source tree, and does a 'make install'
on the portions you specify.  You can then strip out stuff you 
don't need (e.g., all the lib*.a files, etc.)

- I built a version of the FreeBSD tree with all the stuff in /bin
and /sbin not statically linked.  This was essential to fit all that
was needed into 8MB.

- Compress the kernel, since /boot/loader will grok that.  Another
bit space saving.

- I also worked-over /etc/rc.diskless2 slightly as well.

I then netbooted the net4501 and ran it diskless.  Used fdisk and
disklabel the CF card, and then restored a dump of the stripped down
system on it.

(I've left out all the stupid mistakes along the way..)

My net4501 system runs with the CF disk with a single slice, and a
single partition mounted read-only.  There's a small MFS /dev and
a small MFS /var.  It's running an ipf-based firewall/NAT thing on
two ethernet ports at the moment, with a vtund based tunnel going
yet another place.  I intend to eventually put my 802.11b access point
on the 3rd ethernet port.

One helpful note that I got after the fact is that you can do
'boot F0' to netboot from the serial console monitor, rather than
trying to boot the blank CF disk.

Also, I used ports/comms/lrzsz to do an XMODEM BIOS upgrade from
inside of tip; that seemed to work pretty well, but wouldn't have
been necessary if I had known about 'boot F0' before.

louie



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