A NetBoot Notes thread

[rsbriggs]

Well, found that I really DO need to tie my mac addresses to a hostname in dhcpd.conf

Starting on trying to get the M7NCD Pro board booted - it uses the Nforce-2 chip set.... On first try, it simply hangs during the PXE boot up sequence.... PCZ had a fix for that....

Need to download the file syslinux-2.05.tar.gz from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux

unzip and untar the thing. find the file pxelinux.0 and copy it to the /tfptboot/lts directory.


Boots - but kernel panics - no NIC driver.... Hmmm. Easiest way to fix this???? Rebuild the kernel, or find one. Let me take a quick look around ltsp and k12ltsp web sites....


OK - the exact problem to be solved here is to get the file nvnet.o into the directory
/opt/ltsp/i386/lib/modules/2.4.21-ltsp-1/kernel/drivers/net

However, I'm going to try re-building the most current ltsp kernel, rather than to attempt to find a compatible nvnet.o -file. Who knows, we might run into some other module later (like on the next board we try) that needs to be loaded, so why not go for the most general solution....

Procedure is to download the file lbe-4.0-beta1.tgz
tar xvzf lbe-4.0-beta1.tgz
cd lbe
./build_all

this gets all the pieces as source code and compiles everything (including the compiler.) The docs say this takes a couple of hours... Once this completes, it should be possible to take the generated kernel and modules, and replace the other ltsp stuff. Might have to re-configure the kernel and re-build it afterwards, too. Don't know yet....

I'll let everyone know in a couple of hours.....

Edit:

What the docs fail to mention is the DOWNLOAD time - this new set up makes building LTSP look nearly exactly like building a Gentoo system! And, given my recent experience in that area - there are more than a few hours of DOWNLOADING to be done.... So, still going..... Currently starting a 56 Meg download of the XFREE subsystem. (Think about downloading the 188 Meg ISO image they have posted.)

Edit: It's a couple of hours later, and it's just started to download the kernel sources. Another update in a couple MORE hours.....