Re: Problems with netboot 0.7.2

[Richard Gooch <rgooch@atnf.CSIRO.AU>]

mike rushford writes:
> Hi;
> 
> I have just started with netboot-0.7.2 and have seen the dots you refer to.
> 
> I have found two things wrong.
> 
> First I tried pressing esc key on the diskless machine and this prompts me for
> another attempt to
> boot via the net. If this does not work then I needed to restart portmap, mountd
> and nfsd
> and then the
> netboot works the very first time. If I shutdown the diskless machine while
> processes are running then this
> seems to trigger this phenomena of dots during booting the diskless box. I think
> it worked ok if I
> stooped all processes and then rebooted the diskless box.
> 
> Hope there is some clue for tour situation. Please let me know more if you learn
> something more
> discreet.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Richard Gooch wrote:
> 
> >   Hi, all. I'm trying to set up a machine to boot Linux over the
> > network, so I've downloaded netboot 0.7.2. Unfortunately, the bootp
> > client does not seem to get an answer, and just prints dots. I know
> > that my bootp server is working OK, because I have another bootp ROM
> > (from Bootware, a commercial product) which *does* manage to receive a
> > bootp reply and load a boot image using tftp. One reason for using
> > netboot is that the Bootware ROM I have does not support images over
> > around 450 kBytes. My Linux bootImage is 1.7 MBytes.
> >
> > I turned on debugging for the packet driver in the bootp client and I
> > get the following:
> >
> > S 0000C0853DEE 45 00 01 48 00 ** 00 00 ff 11 * * 00 00 00 00 ff ff ff ff 00 44
> >
> > where "*" changes every second. The network card is an SMC and I
> > have checked the I/O address, IRQ and MEM address.
> >
> > When I set the debugging level for bootpd on my server to 9, I get:
> >
> > in.bootpd[17621]: connect from 0.0.0.0
> > in.bootpd[17621]: version 2.4.0
> > in.bootpd[17621]: bootptab mtime: Wed Sep 10 18:31:04 1997
> > in.bootpd[17621]: reading "/etc/bootptab"
> > in.bootpd[17621]: read 2 entries (1 hosts) from "/etc/bootptab"
> > in.bootpd[17621]: recvd pkt from IP addr 0.0.0.0
> > in.bootpd[17621]: bootptab mtime: Wed Sep 10 18:31:04 1997
> > in.bootpd[17621]: request from Ethernet address 00:00:C0:85:3D:EE
> > in.bootpd[17621]: found 130.155.196.205 (bcc05)
> > in.bootpd[17621]: bootfile="//bcc.bw"
> > in.bootpd[17621]: vendor magic field is 99.130.83.99
> > in.bootpd[17621]: sending reply (with RFC1048 options)
> > in.bootpd[17621]: setarp 130.155.196.205 - 00:00:C0:85:3D:EE
> >
> > The bootpd server is running Linux 2.0.30.

I've done some more testing with a different network card (NE2000
clone rather than SMC) and a different motherboard (Pentium instead of
486), and it works fine! I'll put the NE2000 clone into the 486 and
see if that works.

				Regards,

					Richard....