Probs with netboot/NFS

[Piers Kittel <debian@biased.org>]

Hello all,

Am trying to boot a diskless client with the following spec:

Gigabtye GA-6BXE
256MB PC133 RAM
Slot 1 Intel Pentium 3 666MHz at 133MHz FSB
Intel Ethernet Pro 100B network card
Geforce MX4000 video card

It downloads the 2.4.32 kernel from my server and boots, but when it 
tries to mount the root filesystem, it fails.  I suspect the problem is 
that it isn't trying to mount it via NFS as there's nothing in the 
server logs that shows the client is trying to mount the root filesystem 
 via NFS.

The failing message is:

=================================
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:ff.
=================================

The message output by netboot is:

=================================
BOOTP: Sending request (press ESC to abort): ok

Local IP: 192.168.1.18
Server IP: 192.168.1.2 ()
Gateway IP: 192.168.1.1
Loading /bootImage.nbi
Options: Blocksize 512
Block 4183 ok

Starting image...

Linux Net Boot Image Loader Version 0.9.8 (netboot)
(copyright notes)

Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
Linux version 2.4.32-pk-20051220 (root@desire) (gcc version 3.3.5 
(Debian 1:3.3.5-13)) #1 Tue Dec 20 17:51:13 GMT 2005
=================================

And the messages found in the bootup list that I think are important are:

=================================
Kernel command line: auto rw root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=/nfsroot 
ip=192.168.1.18:192.168.1.2:192.168.1.1:255.255.255.0:
<etc>
devfs: boot_options: 0x1
<etc>
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 8192K size 1024 blocksize
eepro100.c:v1.09j-t 9/29/99 Donald Becker <url>
eepro100.c: $Revision: 1.36 $ 2000/11/17 <etc>
<etc>
IP-Config: Complete:
device=eth0, addr=192.168.1.18, mask=255.255.255.0, gw=192.168.1.1,
host=192.168.1.18, domain=, nis-domain=(none),
bootserver=192.168.1.2, rootserver=192.168.1.2, rootpath=
<etc>
RAMDISK: cramfs filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: loading 1156 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done
<etc>
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:ff
=================================

(note nothing set after "rootpath" in the IP-Config bit)

The messages in the server logs include:

=================================
Dec 20 20:12:37 destiny dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 00:a0:c9:9b:99:ba via eth0
Dec 20 20:12:37 destiny dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.18 to hinata 
(00:a0:c9:9b:99:ba) via eth0
Dec 20 20:12:37 destiny in.tftpd[14338]: connect from 192.168.1.18 
(192.168.1.18)
Dec 20 20:12:37 destiny tftpd[14339]: tftpd: trying to get file: 
/bootImage.nbi
=================================

The snippets from dhcpd.conf are:

=================================
option root-path "/nfsroot";
next-server 192.168.1.2;
filename "/nfsroot";

host hinata {
        hardware ethernet 00:A0:C9:9B:99:BA;
        fixed-address 192.168.1.18;
        filename "/bootImage.nbi";
}
=================================

bootImage.nbi is stored in /

The command I used to make the .nbi file is:

mknbi-linux -x -d /nfsroot -i rom -r initrd.img-2.4.32.img -k bzImage -o 
bootImage.nbi

Although I note if I use:

mknbi-linux -x -d ram -i rom -r initrd.img-2.4.32.img -k bzImage -o 
bootImage.nbi

I get a different panic message:

=================================
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:00
=================================

but that is the only difference I get.  Is 01:00 better than 00:ff ?

Also how do I solve either problem?

Thanks very much for your help in advance

Regards - Piers