My Gentoo diskless install howto

Matje · Posted: Tue May 20, 2003 11:21 pm Post subject:

I'm afraid it's not that simple. I also use swap over NFS, but you need to do this through a loopback device to fool your system, because swap over NFS normally isn't allowed...
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HAsker · n00b Joined: 20 May 2003 Posts: 15

humm now i got my system to boot into grub but i wont boot because it restarts just when it's going to boot gentoo though the network...

ctford0 · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 2:15 am Post subject:

Anyone have a boot floppy working?? I was trying the suggestion that BradN posted, however after the client downloads the pxegrub it says that it is an invalid image....

Any ideas??

chris

karch · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 3:33 am Post subject: Boot floppy

I had the same invalid image problem with pxegrub, so I downloaded a .lzdsk rom image from rom-o-matic.net and used nbgrub instead -- and everything was much happier... you can find nbgrub in the same stage2 dir as pxegrub in the grub source tree.

-Mike

BradN · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 4:07 am Post subject:

I'd only tested it with the network boot server that knoppix includes, but it seemed to work fine... maybe check how knoppix does it for clues? (tip: let knoppix be the only dhcp server it sees)

ctford0 · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 4:46 am Post subject:

Alright, I seem to have gotten past that barrier (thanks karch), however I think I just hit a brick wall. I get the grub menu and I pick the diskless gentoo then it executes the grub commands. After this I see:

HAsker · n00b Joined: 20 May 2003 Posts: 15

argh... i wounder why my comp just restarts when it's about to start gentoo :/
anyone have a clue?

Swiss.Mage · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2003 Posts: 49 Location: Switzerland

Is your kernel image booting or not ?

If not, it could be an image corruption prolem (check md5sum) or a kernel misconfiguration.

If yes, and if the kernel seems to boot but the computer reboot imediatly, check if the NFS root partition is mounted correctly. Check also your NFS server configuration. Your /etc/exports config file should be like this :

karch · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 3:03 pm Post subject:

It sounds like something is wrong with your tftp server if this is the last thing you see... have you tested to see if you can do basic tftp file transfers?

-Mike

ctford0 · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 3:51 pm Post subject:

Could it be the tftp server? I had to download the grub image before this using tftp right?

Chris

karch · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 4:45 pm Post subject:

Yep... the boot floppy gets you the grub image, which then tells it to use tftp to boot. What happens if you do a test transfer from your tftp server from your workstation (or from the server itself for that matter)? It should go something like this:

GurliGebis · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Posts: 509

I got mine booting, but I constantly gets kernel panic :cry:

Something with:

ctford0 · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 6:09 pm Post subject:

karch: I tried the tftp on the server itself and everything worked fine.

HAsker · n00b Joined: 20 May 2003 Posts: 15

ctford0:
I think we have the same problem because that's the only text i can see too... but i'am pxebooting directly.. it's very strange...

ctford0 · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 7:37 pm Post subject:

HAsker how large is your kernel? I noticed that mine is quite a bit larger than karch's. Is there some limit maybe on how large the kernel can be?
Or maybe my network card just sucks...

Chris

HAsker · n00b Joined: 20 May 2003 Posts: 15

maybe it's something like that.. mine is

karch · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 7:57 pm Post subject:

I wouldn't think that the size of the kernel would matter, but then again, you never know. I built a very basic kernel without too many bells and whistles - only 968K. Besides the options, that SwissMage has in the HOWTO, I didn't add much more than the driver for my crappy ol' RTL8139 network adapter.

-Mike

ctford0 · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 8:11 pm Post subject:

I'll try striping my down tonight and see if it helps.

Chris

HAsker · n00b Joined: 20 May 2003 Posts: 15

ok.. post the answer because i dont have the time to try it :/

ctford0 · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 5:14 am Post subject:

Welp, I cut my kernel down by a couple hundred kb but still doesn't help. Im beginning to thing that I just have a crappy net card. Oh well, dont really know where to go from here.

Any suggestions??

chris

Swiss.Mage · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2003 Posts: 49 Location: Switzerland

After looking on the net, it seems there's a limit in the size of the file that can be transfered by TFTP but I cannot find a value ...

As example, my kernel image is 1.2 MB big.
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ctford0 · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 7:36 pm Post subject:

I think mine was just a little larger than that...

I might give it another try later tonight.

Thanks

Chris

sebest · Posted: Fri May 23, 2003 7:35 pm Post subject:

Edweirdo · Posted: Fri May 30, 2003 2:19 pm Post subject: Problem

Mine seemed to work fine the first time, but everytime after that when I try to boot my client it dies at trying to mount my root filesystem R/W.

zuluh · n00b Joined: 19 Jun 2003 Posts: 3

If I do as the HOWTO says.. If I happen to have a disc on my discless client :lol:

, can I reach it somehow? I wanna use this method to install gentoo on my laptop that hasn't got CD or discdrive, but a PXE enabled card..