Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 22:17:43 +0200 (CEST) From: Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, koitsu@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 7.1 i386 PXE Message-ID: <200810092017.m99KHhdU022649@lurza.secnetix.de> In-Reply-To: <20081009180513.GA10705@icarus.home.lan>
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Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > Dmitriy Kirhlarov wrote: > > I tryin update my install server. Look like 7.1 i386 pxe boot broken. > > My own release build is 7.1-i386-2008-10-05 > > > > Could somebody test this functionality and confirm or disprove my results. > > What's broken about it? What behaviour happens? Are you aware of the > mfsroot bug (see step 7 below): > > http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install.html It is a problem with memory management in the boot loader. I hit exactly the same problem during my experiments with the graphical boot loader, even without PXE and mfsroot involved. The problem is that the btx client breaks and behaves erratically when it runs out of memory. By default it can only use a part of the lower 640 KB of RAM, which isn't very much, given that the loader binary itself is already 250 KB, and the gzip decompressor requires quite some temporary memory for its dictionary. Unfortunately, debugging these things in the boot loader isn't exactly trivial. You can't just load it into gdb and single step it. If you want to boot via PXE but still use a gzipped mfs- root, a workaround is to skip loader.4th and beastie.4th, and instead boot the kernel directly from loader.rc. This should save enough memory to get you through. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real man to make them work, and a God to make them do anything useful.
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