nfs root install/booting

[Bob Ham <rah@bash.sh>]

Hi all,

I've got an old sparc classic that I've been trying to get up and
running over the network.  It's got no harddisk, no cdrom, no floppy;
it's just cpu + memory.  I've been trying to do a debian install over
the network with a serial console but I had some trouble where it came
up with an error about debootstrap returning -1.  I tried numerous times
to install it but it always came up with that error.  Then I ran it and
went back to doing something else, and when I returned it hadn't come up
with the error, so I assume it worked.  Now I'm trying to boot the thing
and complete the installation.  I've set boot-file to "root=/dev/nfs rw
nfsroot=172.18.111.2/store/hal ip=dhcp console=/dev/ttyS1" which seems
to be the done thing.  (I'd note that I've tried various combinations of
boot-file, including ttyS0 (the serial cable is on port A) but they all
result in the same thing.)  I've done it with linux.aout and
tftpboot.img, and they both do the same thing.  It says "Booting Linux"
and then the serial line goes dead (the DSR and CTS indicators actually
go off in seyon.)

I'm not 100% sure a) how to tell it what kernel to boot, b) what kernel
I should be trying to boot, c) how to tell the kernel to use nfs root
and serial console.  If anyone can shed some light on this I'd be
grateful.

Cheers,

Bob

-- 
Bob Ham <rah@bash.sh>