Re: 2 Pb with Etherboot

[markus@infoscape.com]

denis writes:
 > I was not able to join the mailing list. 
 > I did send a mail to majordomo@baghira.han.de
 > with a subjet and a body of subscribe netboot
 > 
 > Could you tell me what is wrong.

Could you please forward the message that you received from the
mailserver to gero@gkminix.han.de; as Gero runs the mailserver, he is
more likely to be able to tell you what went wrong.

 > I tested the server with 2 types of cards :
 > 3C503, NE2000/PCI.
 > I got the same result.
 > 
 > Do i have to conclude it is still potentially a problem with my card ?

If you see the same problem with two different network cards, then we
can probably rule out the server's network cards as a source of the
error. That leaves us with the client's network cards and/or BOOT-Prom 
and the server configuration.

 > How could I test the ARP tables ?

Check the output of "cat /proc/net/arp"; you can use the "arp" program 
to manually set and remove entries. This might shed some light on your 
problem.

 > >> Looks like a server problem as well. If you start bootpd and tftpd out 
 > >> of "/etc/inetd.conf", then there is a sudden peak performance
 > >> requirement on your server whenever the client boots. This might be,
 > >> what you are seeing. Check for bottlenecks (e.g. running top),
 > >> increase memory, remove other processes, watch for lost packages on
 > >> the ethernet, analyze the ethernet traffic (using tcpdump). This
 > >> should shed some light on the problem.
 > >> 
 > 
 > I did forget to say that :
 > 1- When i boot the client on his local disk with linux
 > and use tftp to download the file (which is nomaly 
 > loaded by etherboot.) The client get the file in about 2 seconds.
 > 
 > 2- The configuration is a test config that is :
 > There is on the server X11 and 1 user.
 > There no other client.
 > The load of the server is very low : 95% idle.
 > 
 > 3- ifconfig do not say anything about errors on the server.
 > 
 > 4-  The last declared to speak by tcpdump before a retry of the client
 > is the server.
 > 
 > It seemed to me that with those tests i could say that the server was good.
 > Am i wrong ?

OK, so it also might be a problem with the client. Have you tried
burning an EPROM that is custom-made for the configuration that you
use (i.e. manually set the proper I/O port values in the Config file
and remove all unused NIC drivers)?

-- 
Markus Gutschke                         Internet: markus@infoscape.com
Infoscape, Inc                          Phone:    +1-415-537-3778
657 Mission Street, Suite 200
San Francisco, CA 94105

Disclaimer: The above message represents my personal opinion; It does
            not constitute an offical statement by Infoscape!

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