[ale] Diskless

[Doug Todd]

Byron A Jeff wrote:
> 
> >
> > Hello Everyone:
> >
> > Has anyone had success with diskless PC's. I am trying to get
> > my second computer to run diskless, and am having some
> > trouble.
> 
> Not completely diskless. I've been working with NFS and Ramdisk filesystems
> over the last few months. I've been booting either from the local harddisk
> or floppy. Completely diskless operation requires a network loader on the
> EPROM of the netcard. They exist but I haven't dealt with them yet.
> 
> Tell us about the configuration of both your PC's and how you are trying
> to get diskless operation from the second machine.


Sorry It has taken so long to reply !

The network is running with two NE2000 clones. The rom images can be
found in the net-boot-floppies-1.1. at
ftp.cc.gatech.edu/Linux/system/boot

I have NFS configured, and am exporting the tfptboot filesystem.
Eventually, I will want to use a diferent filesystem for the clients
root
directory, but er, I'm still trying to get it to work ->.

I have Bootp setup, tftp and Botop and NFS are running on the host.

Something strange happens with Bootp. The client get the right IP
adress, but
doesn't point to the root filesystem. It wants to set the root to
/tftpboot/tftpboot. If i manually set the rootfs and kernel options on
the
client, I can get the kernel to load.

Here's a copy of bootptab.

.default:\
        :sm=255.255.255.0:\
        :ds=192.168.0.1:\
        :ht=ethernet:\
        :bf=zImage:\
        :rp=/tftpboot:\
        :sa=192.168.0.1:\
        :hn:to=-18000:

kim:ip=192.168.0.2:hd=/tftpboot:ha=0040053a0882:tc=.default

( the client's  name is kim).


The kernel image was compiled with a.out, elf, and nfs support. When
the kernel loads, it is able to find the root file system on the host.
(/tftpboot/ 

In any case, once this is working, I plan to burn a EEPROM for the
client
side network card.


Doug.