*BSD News Article 48965


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From: gbuchanan@shl.com (Gardner Buchanan)
Subject: Re: NFS install problem (2.0.5R)
Message-ID: <gbuchanan.5.0140F570@shl.com>
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References:  <40ul40$n2i@muenchen.photogrammetrie.de>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 05:33:32 GMT

mehldau@photogrammetrie.de (Gerhard Mehldau) writes:

>I've been trying to do an NFS-install of FreeBSD 2.0.5R,
>using the Walnut Creek CDROM.  The network is working,
>and so seems the NFS mount, but when the actual install
>is attempted, I get the following error message:

>NFS install:
>Couldn't get root image from remotehost:/cdrom!
>Will try to get it from floppy.

>What am I missing?

As far as I know, nothing. The root image is not in the dists
directory.  You have to transfer the root image to a diskette
the same way you did for the boot image and feed the install
script that diskette when required.  This is what I did, and
everything worked fine.

BTW, I had a very perplexing problem with the NFS installation
which when I finally tracked it down turned out to be due to
weirdness in the IBM AIX NFS (I think).  Basically, if I exported
a read-only filesystem (the CD) with a vanilla (ie read-write)
exportfs then FreeBSD was unable to mount the directory using
a vanilla (read-write) mount.  A read-only NFS mount succeeded.
Altering the AIX export to read-only fixed this.

Also, the AIX "cdrfs" filesystem implementation is badly brain
damaged - it does not understand rock-ridge - and installation
of additional packages over and above the ones in dists has been
very painful for me due to the resulting filename strangeness.

Good luck.  I have found the effort invested in installing 2.0.5
to be very very worthwhile.
---
Gardner Buchanan
SHL Systemhouse Inc.
Ottawa Branch
(613) 236-9734