Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 05:48:30 +0100 (MET) From: Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> To: dlowe@sirius.com (David Lowe) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: diskless operation / netbooting prob Message-ID: <199703190448.FAA01847@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> In-Reply-To: <Pine.NXT.3.95q.970318172004.13959A-100000@ds9> from "David Lowe" at Mar 18, 97 05:37:45 pm
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> Hey people - > > I am testing out the possibility of netbooting our FreeBSD machines. We > have a lot of FreeBSD machines with almost no local data being stored on > them. We are already doing 90% of the work over NFS - it makes sense to > take them one further step, to the netbooting phase. > > I've read over Jerry Kendall's howto, and the Handbook entry on the > subject, and am still having a problem; it doesn't work :( > > Both the boot server and the diskless client are Pentium 133 machines, > with 64MB RAM, and SMC EtherPower 10/100 PCI cards on a 10 megabit > network. The server is running 2.2-RELEASE, the client is running > 2.2-BETA. > > After building the nb8390.com loader, putting it on a DOS bootable floppy, no wonder it does not work, nb8390 only supports wd8xxx/ne2000 type of boards and your SMC 10/100 is surely not one of these. The thing which comes closer to netboot is to build a boot floppy with a kernel (and a loader, you have the choice between the FreeBSD loader and fbsdboot) and use the kernel bootp stuff by Tor Egge (I have a copy, I also posted it some time ago). It works fine here, although booting from a floppy is ssssslllllooooowwwww .... this can be overcome if you happen to have a HD and can load the kernel (and just that) from the HD. Luigi -----------------------------+-------------------------------------- Luigi Rizzo | Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Informazione email: luigi@iet.unipi.it | Universita' di Pisa tel: +39-50-568533 | via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 PISA (Italy) fax: +39-50-568522 | http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/ _____________________________|______________________________________
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