Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 20:07:22 -0800 From: Soren Kristensen <soren@soekris.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Help with PXE boot, install and related... Message-ID: <3A7F787A.22139C21@soekris.com>
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Hi everybody, First, let me start with saying that I'm not really a unix hacker, but a hardware designer having a little trouble.... All my questions are related to my hardware development project, an AMD SC520 based minimum network appliance, for details, see http://www.soekris.com/net4501.html 1) I cannot boot FreeBSD using a PXE boot ROM from a FreeBSD server. Even worse, if I set up my Win98 box with a tftp server, I can boot succesfully from that !! The pxeboot gets loaded, grab the correct info from the dhcp server, but can then not download anything more, the server logs say "server tftpd[xxxx]: read: Connection refused" I have updated my boot loader sources to -Stable and have tried both the NFS and TFTP modes. The FreeBSD server doing dhcp and nfs/tftp is running 3.1-Release. The PXE rom is an oem from bootix. I more or less used the instructions from http://people.freebsd.org/~alfred/pxe/ Any ideas ? 2) Using the Win98 tftp server, everything works fine, it downloads the standard install images, and proceed with a standard install of FreeBSD 4.1-Release. (what I happen to have around....) But my next problem is space. Even when using a 48 Mbyte CompactFlash, a minimum install doesn't fit. Anybody know what the required minimum disk space requiment are so I maybe can buy a bigger CompactFlash ? Any way to cut it down ? Does that mean a custom install ? Any pointers to help on doing that ? 3) A general request.... The standard FreeBSD install process don't seem to be very headless friendly (My hardware IS minimal...) Could the developer please try to improve on that ? T.ex, the boot sectors hangs when there's no keyboard controller, the pxeboot is using VGA as default (I had to hardcode it to use serial console), the standard install program graphics is awfull when using a VT100 terminal, and finally, a standard install leaves the system as VGA only, even when installed using a serial console.... 4) And last, for anybody still with me :-) I moved a harddisk with FreeBSD 4.1 from another computer to my test hardware after updating is with a custom kernel and serial console config files. After doing some testing and kernel compiles, I wanted to move it back to speed things up. But now it refuses to boot on the original computer. I boot ok until the login promt, I can even ping it before the promt, then hangs without error messages. Both have the same network hardware. Any ideas ? Regards, Soren Besides my problems, I still like FreeBSD, and been running 3.1-Release on a old HP 486dx-66 as my internet gateway box for over two years. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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