PXE Booting 5.2.1-RC2 on Thinkpad X31

[Dan Pelleg]

"John Morgan Salomon" <john at zog.net> writes:

> Hi there,
>
> I've got 4.9-RELEASE running on my Thinkpad, and am trying to netboot
> 5.2.1-RC2.
>
> The laptop has no floppy or cdrom;  I'd previously managed to install
> a pre-release 5.2 on a separate hard drive, but it's pretty unstable,
> doesn't like ACPI, has trouble finding devices, hence the 5.2.1-RC2.
>
> I've been trying various combinations of tftpboot and nfs to get 5.2 
> booting on the thing--I have finally gotten the laptop to boot the
> contents of the 5.2.1-RC2 kernel and mfsroot floppies, and gotten
> to a setup screen:
>
> -> pxeboot
> include /pxeroot/boot/device.hints
> load /pxeroot/kernel
> /lad -t mfs_root /pxeroot/mfsroot
>
> However, no matter what I do, the machine inevitably freezes after a few
> seconds.  There's no error messages, I can't get an emergency shell open,
> nothing.
>
> Can anyone give me some hints as to what I might be doing wrong?  Has anyone
> gotten 5.x running nicely on a Thinkpad X31?  Any ideas would be appreciated.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -John
>

There are some hints on:
http://gerda.univie.ac.at/freebsd-laptops/

also search the mobile@ list (or post a question there). I got it to
install something around 5.1 by using a USB CD-ROM. It should also work to
boot off the CDROM and do the rest of the install over FTP.

-- 

  Dan Pelleg