*BSD News Article 99700


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From: dwmalone@maths.tcd.ie (David Malone)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Help: diskless booting
Date: 15 Jul 1997 16:40:24 +0100
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
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O. Hartmann <ohartman@ipamzlx.physik.uni-mainz.de> writes:

>Has anybody ever setup a FBSD box as the
>server for diskless clients? How to configure the kernel parameters to 
>force the kernel swapping over the net via nfs?

We have both Suns and FreeBSD boxes booting from Suns and FreeBSD boxes
over the network, with only the usual network fighting to get them going.

We're using tftp for the config of the diskless boxes at the moment.
An examble config file:

rootopts resvport
swapopts resvport
rootfs 134.226.81.13:/var/diskless/pcx2.maths.tcd.ie
swapfs 134.226.81.13:/var/diskless/swap
swapsize 20000
hostname pcx2.maths.tcd.ie

We are using old boot eproms, and have to have some cludges in the
kernel to get them to work OK, but if you are using new boot software
this shouldn't be necessary.

An example kernel config is included at the bottom.

	David.

machine		"i386"
cpu		"I486_CPU"
ident		XTERMINAL
maxusers	8

options		INET			#InterNETworking
options		NFS			#Network Filesystem
options		SYSVSHM

config		kernel	root on wd0 

controller	isa0
controller	eisa0
controller	pci0

controller	fdc0	at isa? port "IO_FD1" bio irq 6 drq 2 vector fdintr
disk		fd0	at fdc0 drive 0

# syscons is the default console driver, resembling an SCO console
device		sc0	at isa? port "IO_KBD" tty irq 1 vector scintr

# Mandatory, don't remove
device		npx0	at isa? port "IO_NPX" irq 13 vector npxintr

device		sio0	at isa? port "IO_COM1" tty irq 4 vector siointr
device		sio1	at isa? port "IO_COM2" tty irq 3 vector siointr

device		lpt0	at isa? port? tty irq 7 vector lptintr

device ed0 at isa? port 0x320 net irq  5 iomem 0xd0000 vector edintr

pseudo-device	loop
pseudo-device	ether
pseudo-device	log
pseudo-device	pty	16
pseudo-device   bpfilter        1       #Berkeley packet filter
pseudo-device	gzip			#Exec gzipped a.out's