Re: Diskless booting -- how?

[Christoph Plattner]

Hello !
 
The test via floppy booted GRUB and testing the command BOOPT
is a good start. But for this functionality you need no diskless
GRUB !

The diskless GRUB image under stage2/nbgrub can be defined as
boot file in the /etc/bootptab or /etc/dhcpd.conf on your server.
Then GRUB itself is booted via the net using for example etherboot
or netboot (boot ROM on NIC, ...).

Then you need a kernel with
        - NFS ROOT FS support
        - IP auto config (BOOTP or DHCP).

This kernel can be anywhere on the server, a directory, where the
client (in this case GRUB) can load the kernel via tftp.
The same is true for the initrd, if you need it (normally not 
nedded here...).

Further you need a root file system which is mounted via NFS then.
This ROOT FS must be exported by the server. For this topic you
can find DISKLESS-HOWTOS or similar docs.

On the GRUB command line or menu.lst file (which is also on the
server in the diskless operation (tag 150)) the following lines
are needed:

bootp
root (nd)
kernel /tftpboot/machine1/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/nfs 
boot

The 'boot' is not needed in the menu file. If the NFS ROOT is not
given by the BOOT/DHCP then you must add

  ... nfsroot=<IP_SERVER>:/tftpboot/machine1/root

to the kernel command line (or whereever your root FS is stored).

I hope I could help you,
with friendly regards

        Christoph P.



dman wrote:
> 
> I built grub 0.90 with diskless support and the proper NIC driver(s)
> (I have several machines with different NICs I want to boot as
> diskless).  I can boot grub (from a floppy or hard disk) and the
> 'bootp' command works.  The problem is that I don't know what to do
> next to get the kernel and start booting it.  I have created a custom
> kernel image that allows root-over-NFS and includes the NIC driver.
> 
> TIA,
> -D
> 
> PS.  I'm not on the list so please cc me as the Mail-followup-to:
>      header requests.
> 
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