Pxeboot for nfs installation woes.

[Christopher McGee]

Erik Norgaard wrote:

> Christopher McGee wrote:
>
>> Hi all, I have a lot of servers on order, so I want to be able to 
>> just network boot them as a jumpstart into the installation (which 
>> will then be scripted).  I am most of the way there.  I have tested 
>> my NFS shares and if I boot a boxe off a cd, I can do the nfs 
>> installation without fail.  I have setup pxeboot, and if I am far 
>> enough along that when I boot off the network, it tftp's the files it 
>> needs, boots through menus, loads the generic kernel, mounts an nfs 
>> root, then errors.  The errors are "exec /sbin/init: error 70".  One 
>> error for each attempt at an init file.  Then it gives me an "init: 
>> not found in path /sbin/init:/sbin/oinit......"  Then it panics and 
>> reboots.  There is so much I've done, I'm not sure what specifics 
>> anyone might need to offer some assistance.
>
>
> 1st: I have done it but with ftp install rather than nfs, see here:
>
>    http://www.daemonsecurity.com/pxe/
>
> I used no cd's to bootstrap or anything.
>
> 2nd: One of the first things done in the bootstrapping is to load the 
> loader.conf, in this you can override any settings of paths to the 
> init program.
>
> For installation usually sysinstall is used, which can be scripted - I 
> assume you are refering to this? - you can set the path with an option 
> in loader.conf, for example:
>
> init_path="/stand/sysinstall"
>
> The option may contain a colon separated list of files and they are 
> checked in order, the first found is run. Check the path to your init 
> or sysinstall on the nfs-client.
>
> Cheers, Erik
>
That is the how-to that I started with, however it jumps around a bit 
becaues they are also showing how to do diskless clients.  Basically I 
have this:

/tftpboot is a link to /usr/local/export/freebsd
I have put the entire cd in /usr/local/export/freebsd
copied pxeboot to /usr/local/export/freebsd
setup nfsserver:/usr/local/export/freebsd as the root_path on the dhcp 
server.  It appears to try to mount that share as the rootpath.
the nfsserver is exporting /usr -alldirs

After the kernel boots there is a line that says:  NFS ROOT: 
192.168.1.98:/usr/local/export/freebsd and then it errors.  If that is 
path to the root of the cd, this should work correct?

Chris