Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 11:48:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> To: bugs@freebsd.org Subject: Installing SNAPs with NFS /usr doesn't work Message-ID: <199605061548.LAA02222@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu>
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I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what... I have a old 386/33 machine with 8MB RAM and no math co-processor in my office which I use for testing. This box has only two small IDE disks in it (one 40 MB and one 50 MB) which aren't large enough to hold a proper install. To work around this, I usually configure this machine as a dataless client: I mount /usr via NFS from the SPARC IPX on my desk running SunOS 4.1.3. The system has a 3c503 (8-bit) ethernet adapter. Which FreeBSD detects and uses just fine. When installing, I usually just configure the smaller of the two disks as swap and use the other for / and /var. I tell sysinstall to do a complete install and just tell it to shut up when it warns me about not having a /usr filesystem. As soon as the emergency holographic shell becomes available, I mkdir /usr and use mount_nfs to mount /usr from the SPARC using the following command: # mount_nfs -P sparc:/path/to/usr /usr Note that I'm installing via FTP, in this case direct from ftp.cdrom.com. This means there's a fair amount of traffic as I'm reading the distribution via FTP and then writing part of it back out via NFS. Installing in this way is really a hack: you have a small window of time in which to create and mount /usr once the bindist starts extracting: it takes it a little while before it actually starts extracting files in /usr. Even so, I had no problem doing this with FreeBSD 2.0.5 and FreeBSD 2.1.0. However, this does not work with 2.2-960501-SNAP or the SNAP before it. Once sysinstall begins extracting files under /usr, it hangs. Generally, it only gets to unpack a dozen files or so (the last time I tried it, it only got up to usr/bin/bc (about ten files in) before it wedged). The amount of files it writes before it gets stuck seems to vary. I've tried several times already, and each time it never gets through more than a few dozen. This is not to say that the network locks up entirely: it's only NFS. I can ping the machine, and I can still switch between virtual consoles, but the system behaves as if the NFS server isn't responding. But the server is working fine. Once the extract gets stuck, if I go into the holographic shell and type df, the holographic shell also wedges. However, I am able to type run df before the extract touches /usr and it does work properly. It's only after the system has been writing to the NFS filesystem for a while that it fails. Before anyone asks, yes I've tried mounting the filesystem with a smaller blocksize. I tried everything down to 1024 bytes with the same result. Note that while this is a 3c503, it's a later model one which doesn't normally exhibit the problem that the older 8-bit 3c503 cards to. I can run FreeBSD 2.1.0 on this machine with the full 8k blocksize without any trouble. Yes, I can also reach ftp.cdrom.com. It's not a problem with reading files from the server. After installing the March SNAP failed, I went back and tried to reinstall 2.1.0 to verify that it wasn't a fluke. Sure enough, I managed to get 2.1.0 reinstalled without a hitch. I have a few other things still to try, but debugging this problem is going to be difficult if I can't get the thing installed. Unfortunately, I don't have any larger disks available. Waiiiiit a minute. Let me try loading from NFS too. Maybe the whole thing doesn't work. [pause] Hm. Well. Surprise surprise: installing via NFS doesn't work either. The source filesystem is mounted, sysinstall starts to read, and then it locks up tight. Has anyone else besides me tried to install any of the 2.2 SNAPs via NFS? Please tell me it's not just me. -Bill -- ============================================================================= -Bill Paul (212) 854-6020 | System Manager Work: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research Home: wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City ============================================================================= License error: The license for this .sig file has expired. You must obtain a new license key before any more witty phrases will appear in this space. =============================================================================
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