Hi everybody,
First, let me start with saying that I'm not really a unix
hacker, but a hardware designer having a little trouble....
All my questions are related to my hardware development
project, an AMD SC520 based minimum network appliance, for
details, see http://www.soekris.com/net4501.html
1) I cannot boot FreeBSD using a PXE boot ROM from a FreeBSD
server. Even worse, if I set up my Win98 box with a tftp
server, I can boot succesfully from that !!
The pxeboot gets loaded, grab the correct info from the dhcp
server, but can then not download anything more, the server
logs say "server tftpd[xxxx]: read: Connection refused"
I have updated my boot loader sources to -Stable and have
tried both the NFS and TFTP modes. The FreeBSD server doing
dhcp and nfs/tftp is running 3.1-Release.
The PXE rom is an oem from bootix. I more or less used the
instructions from http://people.freebsd.org/~alfred/pxe/
Any ideas ?
2) Using the Win98 tftp server, everything works fine, it
downloads the standard install images, and proceed with a
standard install of FreeBSD 4.1-Release. (what I happen to
have around....)
But my next problem is space. Even when using a 48 Mbyte
CompactFlash, a minimum install doesn't fit.
Anybody know what the required minimum disk space requiment
are so I maybe can buy a bigger CompactFlash ? Any way to
cut it down ? Does that mean a custom install ? Any pointers
to help on doing that ?
3) A general request.... The standard FreeBSD install
process don't seem to be very headless friendly (My hardware
IS minimal...) Could the developer please try to improve on
that ?
T.ex, the boot sectors hangs when there's no keyboard
controller, the pxeboot is using VGA as default (I had to
hardcode it to use serial console), the standard install
program graphics is awfull when using a VT100 terminal, and
finally, a standard install leaves the system as VGA only,
even when installed using a serial console....
4) And last, for anybody still with me :-) I moved a
harddisk with FreeBSD 4.1 from another computer to my test
hardware after updating is with a custom kernel and serial
console config files. After doing some testing and kernel
compiles, I wanted to move it back to speed things up.
But now it refuses to boot on the original computer. I boot
ok until the login promt, I can even ping it before the
promt, then hangs without error messages. Both have the same
network hardware.
Any ideas ?
Regards,
Soren
Besides my problems, I still like FreeBSD, and been running
3.1-Release on a old HP 486dx-66 as my internet gateway box
for over two years.
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