Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 13:16:09 -0400 From: Mathew Kanner <mat@cs.mcgill.ca> To: "James A. Mutter" <jmutter@colltech.com> Cc: mat@cs.mcgill.ca, gabriel_ambuehl@buz.ch, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Diskless Message-ID: <20000530131609.A28012@cs.mcgill.ca> In-Reply-To: James A. Mutter's message [FreeBSD Diskless] as of Tue, May 30, 2000 at 02:15:01AM -0500 References: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0005300203320.22077-100000@psasolar.private.psa.pencom.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On May 30, James A. Mutter wrote:
>
> I was searching through the archives and I noticed your question about
> diskless booting. I too am working on a solution with PXE and Intel
> Pro100 cards.
>
> So far I've managed to use a combination of PXE and ISC's dhcp v3Beta
> to load the "pxeloader", which in turn loads a kernel over NFS, which
> finally mounts an NFS_ROOT partition. However, after the root partition
> is mounted everything goes south. If I export a copy of the BSD root
> filesystem (/bin /sbin /dev /var /tmp /dev /stand) from a Solaris box
> nothing works, the kernel complains it can't find "/sbin/init" or
> "/stand/sysinstall", the filesystem is export rw as
> "/data/bsdfs". However if I export "/" from another BSD box everything
> seems to work fine, this is not an acceptable solution though as I can't
> have multiple boxes doing read/writes on the same root fs.
>
> As I've mentioned before I'm trying to work towards a solution where I
> can:
>
> (a) boot "pxeloader" using PXE
> (b) boot customized kernel
> (c) run a scripted sysinstall for an automated installation.
>
> If anyone's ever user "boot net - install" and Jumpstart (Solaris Sparc)
> you'll know exactly what I'm working towards.
>
> I guess I just wanted to share my experience with this PXE thing and
> solicit any advice/experiences that others have had. If we can get this
> right we've taken a huge step in remote management for FreeBSD (and other
> Intel) servers.
I'll contribute the little that I know.
First of all, I've had no success with the NFS version of
pxeloader. It works much better for me using the TFTP. Also, I've
followed the directions in /usr/share/examples/diskless. Using the
scheme suggested there, I export / /usr read-only. The
rc.diskless{1,2} are responsible for making the right places rw using
MFS mounts.
I believe that in the examples directory there is a text
discussing how to use DISKLESS setups for installation. I think that
Matt Dillon calls this "templating".
I don't actually export the root parition of server machine
but a copy of it. When making this copy, don't forget to make stub
directory entries for "/usr /var /tmp" to mount off of. If the "/usr"
mount fails, you won't get access to the utilites /usr/{s}bin and the
start-up sequence will fail with things like "find not found".
You will also need a "/conf /conf/ME /conf/defaults
/conf/defaults/etc" in the exported root.
I'm currently working on what I think is a bug in the kernel
part of BOOTP, it truncates to root path part of the BOOTP response.
Until I figure out why, I'm using a shorter name for it.
All in all, I'm *very* impressed with the direction that this
is going, considering we're using featues that aren't really out there
yet.
--Mat
>
> --
> Jim
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20000530131609.A28012>