From owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Sep 25 23:33:28 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9A3FB106564A for ; Sat, 25 Sep 2010 23:33:28 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Received: from mail2.nber.org (mail2.nber.org [66.251.72.79]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 325698FC13 for ; Sat, 25 Sep 2010 23:33:27 +0000 (UTC) Received: from nber6.nber.org (nber6.nber.org [66.251.72.76]) by mail2.nber.org (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id o8PNM9Qp028795 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NOT); Sat, 25 Sep 2010 19:22:10 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Received: from nber6.nber.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by nber6.nber.org (8.13.8+Sun/8.12.10) with ESMTP id o8PNLYCE017546; Sat, 25 Sep 2010 19:21:34 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (Unknown UID 1079@localhost) by nber6.nber.org (8.13.8+Sun/8.13.8/Submit) with ESMTP id o8PNLXfT017543; Sat, 25 Sep 2010 19:21:34 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: nber6.nber.org: Unknown UID 1079 owned process doing -bs Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 19:21:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Daniel Feenberg To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Anti-Virus: Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Linux Mail Server 5.6.39/RELEASE, bases: 20100925 #4241278, check: 20100925 clean Cc: Alex Aminoff Subject: Network booting FreeBSD with gpxelinx almost works X-BeenThere: freebsd-net@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Networking and TCP/IP with FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 23:33:28 -0000 We have been network booting FreeBSD for some time with pxeboot. So I am confident that we have the dhcpd.conf and the root filesystem sufficient for diskless booting. But now we would like to have menu of OSs to boot and got the idea somewhere that gpxelinux could do that for us. We copied gpxelinux.0 from the syslinux-4.02 distribution and replaced pxeboot with "gpxelinux" in the dhcpd.conf file. Indeed with a configuration file in pxelinux.cfg like this: default freebsd label freebsd PXE pxeboot and the root path still specified as a DHCP option, FreeBSD 8.1 does boot. If I replace the first line with: UI menu.c32 the client does display the menu and but if one hits return to select the single item offered the client merely hangs for a minute, then announces "boot failure". I am guessing that once the UI is interposed, somehow the root path isn't getting transmitted to pxeboot. All the other gpxelinux boot kernels seem to expect the information about the root filesystem to be specified in the pxelinux.cfg file, rather than in dhcpd.conf. Does anyone have experience with this? FreeBSD isn't mentioned anywhere I can find in the syslinux or gpxelinux documentation, and the various web posting I have found linking FreeBSD to gpxelinux are all about do installations of iso files over the net. Daniel Feenberg NBER http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/FreeBSD-diskless.html