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Date:      Thu, 14 Jan 1999 04:51:58 +0100 (MET)
From:      Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
To:        ambrisko@whistle.com (Doug Ambrisko)
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: netboot & ELF kernels
Message-ID:  <199901140351.EAA28535@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
In-Reply-To: <199901131708.JAA29927@whistle.com> from "Doug Ambrisko" at Jan 13, 99 09:08:24 am

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> | 
> | I've been sitting on this for some time (sorry, Doug), but will
> | try to finish looking at it in the next few days.
> 
A few comments on netboot. Recently, erich@lodgenet.com
contributed netboot support for "fxp" cards. The msg was posted on some
freebsd list about 1 month ago, and the file to look for is "nbfxp.tgz".

Again, better than nothing, although it does not support ELF i think.

<about the linux etherboot>

> This package has a lot of nice features:
>       -	Select different kernels to boot (including Dos images)
>       - Pass in FreeBSD boot flags via bootp request
>       - uses tftp for loading kernel (some may argue this is not a nice
> 	feature but I like it for a bunch of reasons ... no need for 
> 	nfs if kernel has a mfs file system)

in fact, FreeBSD's netboot uses NFS for loading the kernel, but you
don't need it in the loaded kernel either. The difference in netboot's
code is minimal (just a few calls to get the appropriate credentials to
access the file, then the routines to download the pkts are very
similar and already present in the freebsd's netboot anyways.

Having tried both the tftp and nfs method, i prefer the latter a lot
because it means i don't have to cnfigure another service (TFTP) on the
server: with the current FreeBSD's netboot, you can supply all
parameters with bootp (which you'd need anyways -- or replace it with
DHCP i guess) and download the kernel with NFS (which your server
probably already has).

	cheers
	luigi

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