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Date:      Thu, 20 Oct 2005 15:38:08 +0000
From:      "Bruce O'Neel" <edoneel@sdf.lonestar.org>
To:        Miles Nordin <carton@Ivy.NET>
Cc:        freebsd-sparc64@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Is there a nice diskless HOWTO?
Message-ID:  <20051020153808.GA6130@SDF.LONESTAR.ORG>
In-Reply-To: <oqd5m3zq8t.fsf@castrovalva.Ivy.NET>
References:  <20051017082439.GA9372@SDF.LONESTAR.ORG> <oqll3uox1n.fsf@castrovalva.Ivy.NET> <20050726161047.GJ62369@funkthat.com> <20050726162755.GA67178@xor.obsecurity.org> <20050726120052.7EFAE16A41F@hub.freebsd.org> <42E7119B.5010101@alaska.net> <200507270515.j6R5Fhj17277@hobbit.sirius.net.au> <oqzms7naaq.fsf_-_@castrovalva.Ivy.NET> <oqd5m3zq8t.fsf@castrovalva.Ivy.NET>

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Hi,

Thanks again.  These instructions were enought to get things running.

A bit of a pain that locking doesn't work though :-)  Guess I won't
be changing the password without booting from a disk though...

Thanks.

cheers

bruce
 
On Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 07:18:58PM -0400, Miles Nordin wrote:
> >>>>> "bo" == Bruce O'Neel <edoneel@sdf.lonestar.org> writes:
> 
>     bo> Hi, Is there a nice diskless HOWTO? 
> 
> AFAICT no.
> 
> I believe you can install by hand just as on NetBSD, except while for
> NetBSD you just extract the .tgz files, for FreeBSD you have to cat
> together the blah.a{b,c,d,e,f} chunks, and then pipe that into gzip |
> pax -rpe.  or is it bunzip2, i forget.
> 
> The three significant differences I found between FreeBSD and NetBSD
> nfsroots are:
> 
>  * On NetBSD, the 'option root-path' option is a path only, not a
>    server IP, and the IP address of the root NFS server if it differs
>    from the 'next-server' goes into the 'option swap-server' field.
>    NetBSD doesn't document this, but that's how it is.  On FreeBSD,
>    the root-path option is "1.2.3.4:/path/to/root" as you'd expect.
> 
>  * FreeBSD is broken all over the place if the NFS server doesn't
>    support locking.  like, 'vi' doesn't work for example.  and AFAICT
>    it is impossible to disable the default locking-enabled mount
>    options of an NFS root.  NetBSD doesn't use locking anywhere---I
>    think there is no working NetBSD code written for NFS locking,
>    client or server.
> 
>  * NetBSD NFSroot users like to make mfs's and tmpfs's for things like
>    /dev, /tmp, /var/run.  FreeBSD doesn't have mount_mfs---it uses
>    something else.  I couldn't get FreeBSD's mdmfs to work at all, but
>    FreeBSD has a devfs so it's good there's no incentive to make a
>    /dev mfs as on NetBSD.
> 
> -----8<-----
> >>>>> "jg" == John-Mark Gurney <gurney_j@resnet.uoregon.edu> writes:
> >>>>> "kk" == Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org> writes:
> >>>>> "rw" == Royce Williams <royce@alaska.net> writes:
> >>>>> "a" == alm  <alm@sirius.net.au> writes:
> 
>     jg> http://people.freebsd.org/~murray/sparc64/install.html
>     kk> Here's a snippet from my dhcpd.conf
>     rw> http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200301/sparc64-nfsroot.html
>      a> -Configure a static DHCP lease for it: 
>      a> host netboot { 
>      a>   hardware ethernet <mac-addr> ; 
>      a>   option host-name "<hostname>" ;
>      a>   fixed-address <IP addr.> ; 
>      a>   always-reply-rfc1048 on; 
>      a>   filename "/boot/loader"; 
>      a>   next-server <TFTP/NFS server> ; 
>      a>   option root-path "<TFTP/NFS server>:/mnt" ;
>      a> }
> 
> It turned out to be pretty easy just to get the system booted once
> hearing that /boot/loader could be fed straight to OpenPROM over tftp.
> 
> This:
> 
>      a> boot net:dhcp
> 
> behaved the same on my sparc64 as 'boot net'.  The OpenPROM used RARP
> (not DHCP) to find the second-stage loader even with 'boot net:dhcp'.
> Then it TFTPs to whatever machine replied to the RARP.  I wonder if
> net:dhcp is a cue to Solaris's inetboot?  They have this massively
> complicated 'wanboot' framework now, too, including multiple
> cryptographic keys and CGI scripts on web servers.  <shudder>.
> 
> I put /boot/loader in the tftpboot directory and named it C0A8017C to
> match the IP of my Sun, 192.168.1.124.  /boot/loader then used DHCP
> (not bootparams) to get just one option, root-path:
> 
> host amber {
>   fixed-address amber;
>   hardware ethernet 08:00:20:xx:xx:xx;
>   option root-path "69.31.131.61:/export0/nbnfs/amber";
> }
> 
> and /boot/loader loaded loader.conf and whatever else it needed over
> NFS rather than TFTP.  The only thing loaded over TFTP was
> the file C0A8017C (a copy of /boot/loader).
> 
>      a> lofiadm
> 
> I didn't end up using this nor the mfsroot, because I didn't use
> sysinstall.  I just extracted all the {base,doc,src,..}.{aa,ab,ac...}
> files by hand.  But it's good to have those instructions written down
> because others will probably want to netboot into sysinstall.
> 
> Now I have three more problems:
> 
>  1. The NetBSD NFS server I'm using doesn't support locking, so I
>     can't run vipw or pwd_mkdb, and vi always says 'UNLOCKED' in the
>     status bar.  I can't 'mount -u -o -L 69.31.131.61:/ex.... /'
>     because the -L option is documented, obeyed only on initial mount,
>     not for remount.  Is there a way to get this option turned on for
>     the initial root mount?
> 
>  2. I tried 'mdmfs -s 32m md /tmp' and it never returned to the
>     prompt.  ^C doesn't work, and I can't get to 'ok' or to 'ddb>' by
>     pressing BREAK.  Is there a sysctl to obey BREAK?
> 
>  3. Boot hung after ``waiting 15 seconds for SCSI devices to settle''
>     when I have my Firewire card installed.  The Install CD boots
>     successfully with the card installed and even makes an fwe0.  Is
>     there a way to use the loader to disable a broken device like this
>     SCSI-over-Firewire?  I tried commands like 'disable-module sbp'
>     but it always says 'sbp not found'.
> 
> sorry for all the questions.  I'm just getting started.
> 



-- 
edoneel@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org



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