Netbooting PPC boards?

["Peter Leif Rasmussen (PLR)" <PLR@tt.dk>]

I downloaded and read about using netboot ("mknbi-linux Version 0.9.4
(netboot)") attempting to boot up some PPC based boards running Motorola
HALinux from a Linux workstation running RH7.3.

The problem I am having and that I can't find any solution to is that when I
attempt to make the boot image like this: (I tried in various ways)

$ mknbi-linux -d ram -i kernel -r ramdisk-text.image.gz -k vmlinux.gz -o
bootImage -xx

I get the following message:

Kernel image file name  = vmlinux.gz
Output file name        = bootImage
Ramdisk image file name = ramdisk-text.image.gz
Kernel command line     = "auto rw root=/dev/ram nfsroot=kernel
nfsaddrs=kernel"
mknbi-linux: could not find magic number in kernel boot sector
---

I also tried with an uncompressed kernel file, which I believe it probably
should be, but the message is the same. I also tried with "-i rom" as stated
in the examples, but from reading the docs I believe the "kernel" should fit
my situation better.

If I replace the kernel file with one for a Linux i386 system, and one that
is compressed everything seems to go all right, but that isn't a useful
system and was just for testing :-)

The files "vmlinux" and "ramdisk-text.image.gz" are taken from a Motorola
HALinux 2.1 package, which are normally used with booting from a CDROM, eg.
in a CPX8221 CompactPCI chassis with (among others) MCPN765 boards, which is
my setup. Basically, from a Linux point of view, it is a PowerPC based
system in many ways similar to a Power Mac.

Looking into the source file "mknbi-linux/mknbi.c" to figure out where the
error came from I wasn't able to figure out what "magic number" it was not
happy with? Does anyone here understand what might be the problem?

Thank you very much,

Peter
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