Kind of solved: Diskless SGI Indy - auto boot PROM settings?
Ok, I have the Indy booting automatically now, though not quite the way
I thought. To recap:
I could manually boot with:
bootp(): append="nfsroot=192.168.1.1:/PATH/TO/NFSROOT,rsize=8192,wsize=8192"
so the challenge was: Where do I put the parameters that are within the
append=""
The final solution was like this:
In PROM:
setenv SystemPartition bootp():
setenv OSLoader YOUR_TIP22_IMAGE
As none of my experiments with the PROM variables and the append=""
parameters worked, I finally figured that I might use my DHCP server to
help. I added the following line to the DHCP conf for my Indy:
option root-path "192.168.1.1:/PATH/TO/ROOT,rsize=8192,wsize=8192";
and - Presto! - this worked (yes, even the rsize/wsize!).
That left me with the last parameter: The "rw" (the Indy was complaining
loudly that / was read-only). Again, putting it e.g. in OSLoadOptions
did not work. During one boot I noticed an error message complaining
about not being able to NFS mount something as statd was not (yet)
running and that I should use "nolock" if I wanted to mount anyway. So
did - I added "nolcok" to the mount statement for / in fstab - and that
solved the rw problem, as the remount of / succeeded. Not having NFS locking
there should be fine, as the Indy will be the only machine using that
particular share.
Finally "console=d" in the PROM and now I can switch on the Indy and it
boots straight into Debian off the fileserver. Mission accomplished.
Nonetheless, if some PROM-guru has some hints as to why my previous
tries did not work, I'd still be very curious to hear about it!
Cheerio,
Thomas
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Thomas Ribbrock http://www.ribbrock.org
"You have to live on the edge of reality - to make your dreams come true!"
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