Re: nfs boot off of a kernel on a floppy
"Krosigk, Lorenz Von" wrote:
...
> The only thing I did to make it a little bit easier was installing a "new"
> debian on a 500 MB disk I had and to mount this working system in my
> "NFS-Server" machine therefore I didn't had to do all the file-copying as
> discribed in the NFS-Root-Client-Mini-HOWTO (I think it was this one).
If you'd like to save some spaces, you can select several directories to
be exported. Of course, the server and the clients have to be running
the same version of the OS. If I remember correctly, /lib, /bin, /sbin,
/usr can be exported safely.
> The easiest (and the slowest)way is to boot the client with a floppy and to
> use rarp herefore you have to edit a file in /etc/ (del servidor) (with man
> rarp you should find the file's name).
> For the real NFS-thing it doesn't matter how you resolve the clients
> IP-number (rarp, bootpd or dhcp)
> Greetings Lorenz
I tried to remove rarp support for the kernel (on the floppy) once, it
didn't work properly. It seems that neetboot needs rarp and bootpd in
order to run.
> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: Brian Servis [mailto:servis@purdue.edu]
> Enviado el: viernes 10 de septiembre de 1999 1:00
> Para: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Cc: recipient list not shown; @lists.debian.org@rhodae
> Asunto: nfs boot off of a kernel on a floppy
>
...
> My ultimate goal is to have a floppy
> with an appropriate kernel on it that I can stick in the machine and
> reboot the machine grabbing everything via nfs off my Linux box.
It's doable, but I think the standard installation scripts wouldn't be
sufficient. You need to configure (edit) several files manually to get
netboot running. Of course, you could go brute-force-method and reinstal
everything from scratch every time you need to have a new client, but I
think it wouldn't be that appropriate for Linux users to do so. (Why
don't we just write some little perl script folks...? So that each
additional client machine would need a simple directory-copying.)
>I am
> reading the NFS-HOWTO, the NFS-Root Mini-HOWTO and the NFS-Root-Client
> Mini-HOWTO. Any other docs I should look at?
NET-3-HOWTO...?
> I am running slink with a slew of 'apt-get --compile source' packages
> from potato with kernel 2.2.12. Should I use the kernel NFS server or
> the userland server. What about the difference between dhcp, bootp and
> rarp? I don't have a boot rom on the client so I am not sure how that
> affects anything yet.
Ideally, you need to have two Linux machines with a harddisk on each one
and both connected via a network (a strand of thin cable, probably); so
you can see whether nfs is set up correctly. Try to export this and that
directories on one machine and mount them on the other one. If that
works, get tftp running. I think the default directories for tftp is
/tftpboot; if you don't like it, edit the inetd.conf and change the
entry for tftp (to in.tftpd <dir>, perhaps). Try to get some files via
tftp (use it just like ftp, except that tftp needs no login).
Selecting directories that can be exported is a bit tricky, so I think
the easisest way is to instal a "new system" on the server machine.
Since bootp would boot from /tftpboot/x.x.x.x (where x.x.x.x is the IP
number you assign for the client machine; defined in /etc/bootptab),
just create x.x.x.x directory in /tftpboot, then export it (in
/etc/exports). On the other machine, mount that directory somewhere, and
then install a new system using the mount point as the root directory.
If you don't like tftp files residing in /tftpboot, you can edit a file
in the kernel source directories that has "/tftpboot" in it and change
the line to suit what you have changed in inetd.conf. The kernel
defaults to /tftpboot/x.x.x.x to mount as the (nfs) root directory. If
you'd like it to be /usr/tftpboot/x.x.x.x, editing the kernel source
file is a must. Build the kernel and put it on a floppy (using dd).
Once you have a new system on the server machine with /tftpboot/x.x.x.x
as its root directory and also a bootable floppy, then it's time to boot
the other machine using the floppy. Later, when you are already familiar
with nfs, nfs-root, tftp, rarp, selecting some directories on the server
for exporting would be useful (to save some storage space).
Oki
ps: make sure that named is configured and running well.
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