From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Apr 19 19:29:04 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E0A5A16A4CE; Tue, 19 Apr 2005 19:29:04 +0000 (GMT) Received: from server.t-hosting.hu (server.t-hosting.hu [217.20.133.7]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 63CC543D4C; Tue, 19 Apr 2005 19:29:04 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from gabor.kovesdan@t-hosting.hu) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by server.t-hosting.hu (Postfix) with ESMTP id B4FC69975C2; Tue, 19 Apr 2005 21:34:33 +0200 (CEST) Received: from server.t-hosting.hu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (server.t-hosting.hu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 07873-01-2; Tue, 19 Apr 2005 21:34:33 +0200 (CEST) Received: from [80.98.207.149] (catv-5062cf95.catv.broadband.hu [80.98.207.149]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by server.t-hosting.hu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 24967997415; Tue, 19 Apr 2005 21:34:33 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <42655BE6.5020108@t-hosting.hu> Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 21:28:38 +0200 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?K=F6vesd=E1n_G=E1bor?= User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Marc Olzheim , wingman@waika9.com References: <20050419075158.6444A31931C@postfix4-2.free.fr> <20050419190557.GA82027@stack.nl> In-Reply-To: <20050419190557.GA82027@stack.nl> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at t-hosting.hu cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: PXEBOOT/TFTPBOOT + big MD_ROOT problem X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 19:29:05 -0000 Marc Olzheim wrote: >On Tue, Apr 19, 2005 at 09:52:07AM +0200, Emmanuel Chriqui wrote: > > >>Hi, >> >>I'm trying to make very big MD_ROOT (300MB) sent using PXEBOOT+TFTPBOOT. No >>NFS. >> >> > >Any reasons for not using NFS ? > > > >>I use i386/5.4RC2/TFTPD/PXEBOOT+TFTPBOOT . >>(same pb with a 5.3). >> >>Am I missing something obvious? >> >> > >I'm not sure. tftp itself is able to handle 32MB+ files, but maybe the >loader isn't. > >A workaround, no using NFS, could be to tftp a second filesystem image >on boot and mount that from the root filesystem. > >Marc > > I assume that the PXE clients are diskless clients. If so, do they have enough memory to handle this extremely large image? As for tfpt, it uses UDP. UDP is usually used for transfer small datagrams, for instance DNS replies. It is also said to be an unreliable protocol. The client should repeat the request when no data receives. I doubt this solution is reliable and flexible enough. My idea for a workaround is creating a ramdisk from a small boot image, and transfer the less necessary userland binaries from the boot server to the ramdisk using normal ftp connection. Cheers, Gábor Kövesdán