Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2012 01:07:54 -0400 From: Zaphod Beeblebrox <zbeeble@gmail.com> To: FreeBSD Net <freebsd-net@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: PXE Boot vmware 8.x fails after pxeboot. Message-ID: <CACpH0MeJP%2BN4r9N2iUkrvA%2BP0GU=8L_q_eThwST3QviH_%2B2rfw@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <CACpH0Mdd4%2B7PVrhcp%2BPfa8fQ9Zg=HwX6v9pTbn4JUkuaane%2B5Q@mail.gmail.com> References: <CACpH0McEdq824muqFRqLGhZn_vKFsOWZjOSBUd_0hmNw2FPfbA@mail.gmail.com> <CACpH0Mdd4%2B7PVrhcp%2BPfa8fQ9Zg=HwX6v9pTbn4JUkuaane%2B5Q@mail.gmail.com>
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Replying to my own message again, I tried booting the same configuration on the raw computer hardware (as opposed to vmware). On the raw computer hardware, pxeboot correctly loads a kernel and boots it. This seems to imply that pxeboot and vmware 8.x don't play well together. On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 1:27 AM, Zaphod Beeblebrox <zbeeble@gmail.com> wrote= : > Replying to my own message, I add more below... > > On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Zaphod Beeblebrox <zbeeble@gmail.com> wro= te: >> I have had diskless FreeBSD machines before. =A0I started this project >> with an eye to booting iscsi disks, but there seems to be no way to >> communicate the root disk path (and parameters) to FreeBSD --- >> something that might be solvable, but I need practical at the moment. >> So I fall back on NFS diskless with PXE boot (I may have used >> etherboot in the past --- it's been awhile). >> >> Anyways... this attempt is made with FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE binaries. >> >> In my network, 192.168.0.1 is the DHCP and TFTP server. =A0192.168.0.52 >> is my NFS server. =A0The new vmware guest is bridged and gets >> 192.168.0.135. =A0It successfully gets 'pxeboot' onto the vmware guest >> --- pxeboot prints it's banner. =A0Then the only network traffic I >> observe is DHCP Discover (vmware, presumably the pxeboot binary) >> followed by DHCP Offer (192.168.0.1 again) and this repeats. >> >> Now the dhcp offer gives a root path of >> "192.168.0.52:/vr/diskless/hit" ... and I've tried it with and without >> a trailing slash. >> >> Obviously this is something within the pxeboot's binary as no attempt >> to make the nfs mount occurs. > > ... With a few more variations of this test, I came across a > configuration where the pxeboot client loaded into the vmware system > would continue to spam the "options next-server" host to mount "/" ... > interestingly here, it seems to completely ignore "options root-path" > ... both the ip address and the path portions alike. > > ... but said behavior only occurs with some set of random > configuration changes on the returned DHCP packets and/or slightly > different versions of pxeboot (which I've pulled from various hosts > from 8.x through the 9.x that I'm trying to boot with. > > It strikes me that the pxeboot process is hanging somewhere ... or > overwriting memory ... or somesuch ... on this box. > > Has anyone seen or investigated this type of behavior?
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