Booting via NFS (Re: Other stuff)

[Tor Slettnes <tor@tor.slett.net>]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com> writes:

    Jim> I finally set myself up so I can boot off the network.  So
    Jim> now I am confident that I recover the machine if I mess up.
    Jim> This means that I am in a position to test booting into a
    Jim> Debian image. 

I just did that also, booting from a Debian PC.  I ran into a couple
of snags, which may be worth mentioning for others who want to try.

   - Make sure to use the 'eth0' interface on the Netwinder.
     I had my network setup on 'eth1', which prevented the firmware
     from doing DHCP negotiation with my PC to get started.

   - The debian chroot image from Jim's server (ftp.jimpick.com) needs
     a few additions:  All files in the /dev/ directory as shipped
     from Corel.

   - An /etc/fstab file should be created.  Mine contains:

        tor.slett.net:/home/tftp/netwinder / nfs defaults 0 0
        /dev/hda2	/mnt/root	ext2	defaults 0 1
        /dev/hda3	sw		swap	defaults 0 0
        /dev/hda4	/mnt/local	ext2	defaults 0 1
        proc		/proc		proc	defaults 0 0


   - A useful way to be able to monitor progress during init.d scripts
     is adding these two statements inside the 'for' loops in 
     /etc/init.d/rcS and /etc/init.d/rc:

           echo About to execute ${i}...
           /bin/sleep 2


   - There is no "/sbin/getty" in this image.  This is the one I am
     trying to get past now.   (So I have not actually gotten a
     shell prompt yet).

   - And of course, I get segfaults, coredumps, etc all the time.
     Come next workday, and I'll be checking with Corel if that's 
     hardware, software or bad karma.


-tor