init dying with NFS root

[Tim Bell <bhat@trinity.unimelb.edu.au>]

Hi,

I'm trying to set up a Beowulf cluster using NFS root for booting,
but I'm not having much success.

First of all, any dynamically linked init (or init replacement, such as
init=/bin/bash) fails, with no error messages.  I had no idea how to go
about debugging that one, so I switched to statically linked
executables, and encountered...

The second problem is that even statically linked executables fail, but
after executing a little bit.  For instance, init (with some extra
logging) usually fails just before it opens /etc/inittab.  Hello world
gets all the way through (but isn't good for much ;-).  sash can cope
with one empty command before freezing.  shell2 (from Richard Stevens'
"Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment") can execute /bin/ls
before freezing.

This is all using 2.4.0-prerelease.  (2.2.18 and 2.2.19pre3 both failed
before even getting to mounting root -- I'm not sure why yet.)  The
kernel is loaded by LILO from an ext2 filesystem on a floppy or hard
disk.

Any clues as to what's going on, or the next thing to try, would be much
appreciated.

(Reply-to set to debian-user.)

Tim.
-- 
Tim Bell - bhat@trinity.unimelb.edu.au - System Administrator & Programmer
    Trinity College, Royal Parade, Parkville, Victoria, 3052, Australia