Remote Boot

[Tobias P. Santos]

Hello,

I am trying to boot a FreeBSD diskless client with no success.
Actually, I can boot the client, the kernel is downloaded and begins
to boot. Then it tries to reach the DHCP/BOOT server, but this never
occurs and the machine repeats the following messages forever:

bootpc_call: sosend: 13 state 00000000
DHCP/BOOTP timeout for server 255.255.255.255

I connected both machines (server and client) with a crossover cable and
ran tcpdump on server. Once the kernel is downloaded, there isn't any
more talking on the network so the client is not asking for a DHCP/BOOTP
server as it should be, or as it says to be.

I made these tests with FreeBSD 4.8 and then switched back to 4.4 but
got the same behaviour with both versions.

With version 5.0, the kernel was downloaded but it didn't boot, so I
gave up 5.x.

The NIC's are Realtek 8139 detected as rl0 on client and also on server.
BTW, I also tried an ed0 interface but it didn't change anything.

Anyone could give a hand here? The only thing I can imagine is something
wrong with diskless kernel, but I've compiled with the handbook
instructions:

options     BOOTP          # Use BOOTP to obtain IP address/hostname
options     BOOTP_NFSROOT  # NFS mount root filesystem using BOOTP info
options     BOOTP_COMPAT   # Workaround for broken bootp daemons.

Any clues?

Thank you in advance!
Best regards,
--
Tobias.