Re: Documentation: Installing FreeBSD 7.0 via serial console and PXE
Jeremy Chadwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I believe the options you're referring to are LOADER_TFTP_SUPPORT and > LOADER_NFS_SUPPORT. Even if you define LOADER_NFS_SUPPORT=no, loader(8) > will still resort to using NFS. I've confirmed this on a couple > occasions by defining PXE_DEBUG=1 and looking at the output. NFS, from > what I can tell, is needed regardless because TFTP offers no way (AFAIK) > of handling directory structures. This is speculation on my part, but > the confirmation that there's no way to do a pure TFTP-based install has > been verified. I have installed FreeBSD via PXE a lot of times and managed to avoid using NFS every single time. Very brief notes about how to do it is included on this page: http://borderworlds.dk/writings/freebsd_on_toshiba_portege_r100.html -- Christian Laursen ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Documentation: Installing FreeBSD 7.0 via serial console and PXE
On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 12:06 -0800, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 02:50:43PM -0500, Ed Maste wrote: > > > iv. Knowledge of how TFTP and DHCP work, and how to debug them if > > > they break, > > > v. Intricate knowledge of configuring a DHCP server (common > > > question: "what's the 'next-server' and 'option root-path' > > > stuff? Is it needed? Why?") > > > > I admit that I haven't tried installing Linux or Solaris via PXE, but I > > find it interesting that such knowledge wouldn't be required for them. > > It's much more "solid" in the sense that with Linux, you simply tell the > boot loader (GRUB or whatever else) to pass the kernel an argument that > says "use this serial port speed, no VGA console, and output everything > to this serial port". That's *it*. > > I'd have to dig a little deeper on Solaris i386 (I'm pretty sure it's a > boot loader option, similar to -S115200 in /boot.config on FreeBSD), but > on Sparc I believe OpenBoot takes care of this pain for you. At least on my V100 (which is admittedly old machine) it does so by mandating 9600,n,8 -- no choice, no pain ;) -- Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko (Олександр Коваленко) ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Documentation: Installing FreeBSD 7.0 via serial console and PXE
Hi Jeremy, I'm very glad that you a) can write! b) that you are actually doing something with respect to the zillions of missguided how-to's :-) Having some experience with the subject, and please, don't read me wrong, I see some different approaches: - indeed this IS the 21'st century, and it's unbelivable that we still have to deal with baudrates! (why can't they be more like modems? autosense:-) - newer servers don't have serial anymore :-(, the have IPMI/ILO/etc some only have com2 what im trying to say, is that hard coding where the console is is a 'problem' It's my belief that the setting of the console can be done via DHCP - at the moment I can select the com1/2 - sio.0/sio.1 - via dhcp. the other item I would like to raise, is the way we do it here. 1st: I boot the new host diskless, this allows us to find out quickly if all hardware is working, using a tested root/kernel - since DHCP/TFTP/NFS are working, it takes only a few minutes to bring up a new host set it to boot pxe add the mac address to the dhcp.conf and reboot 2nd: if/and when we decide to make the host 'stand-alone', we do sysinstall to partition the disk (or via bsdlabel if you are good at maths) cd /mnt-root rsh -n server dump 0f - /the/root/partition | restore rf - change the bios setting to boot off disk (or if you have the console, reboot and hit ESC when doing dhcp ...) ok, so i fibbed a bit :-), there are some small 'configurables'(*) missing, but I hope you get the idea. Cheers, danny PS: *: like setting a diskless setup, which is rather simple and gladly can try to explain so that you can the write it out in readable english :-) ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Documentation: Installing FreeBSD 7.0 via serial console and PXE
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 07:42:54PM +, N.J. Mann wrote:
> In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> on Tuesday, 29 January, 2008 at 11:09:13 Jeremy Chadwick ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> wrote:
> > I spent 7-8 hours yesterday working on accomplishing ${SUBJECT}, and in
> > the process wrote a document on it. There are scattered docs all over
> > the Web describing how to do this, but all of them are either outdated
> > or incorrect in some regards (no offence intended), hence what I wrote.
> >
> > http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install.html
>
> This is great. However, shouldn't 192.168.1.200 be 192.168.1.100 for
> newbox.home.lan in the "Common Paths/Terms Used" table?
You're right -- thanks! I got some other mails about similar typos,
which I'm fixing up as the mails come in. :-)
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| Jeremy Chadwickjdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
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Re: Documentation: Installing FreeBSD 7.0 via serial console and PXE
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 02:50:43PM -0500, Ed Maste wrote: > > iv. Knowledge of how TFTP and DHCP work, and how to debug them if > > they break, > > v. Intricate knowledge of configuring a DHCP server (common > > question: "what's the 'next-server' and 'option root-path' > > stuff? Is it needed? Why?") > > I admit that I haven't tried installing Linux or Solaris via PXE, but I > find it interesting that such knowledge wouldn't be required for them. It's much more "solid" in the sense that with Linux, you simply tell the boot loader (GRUB or whatever else) to pass the kernel an argument that says "use this serial port speed, no VGA console, and output everything to this serial port". That's *it*. I'd have to dig a little deeper on Solaris i386 (I'm pretty sure it's a boot loader option, similar to -S115200 in /boot.config on FreeBSD), but on Sparc I believe OpenBoot takes care of this pain for you. > > vii. ... not being able to do a complete 100% TFTP-based (e.g. no > > NFS) install > > Well, you _can_ do a complete 100% TFTP-based install, but the loader > has to be compiled with an option. I agree that is rather unfortunate. I believe the options you're referring to are LOADER_TFTP_SUPPORT and LOADER_NFS_SUPPORT. Even if you define LOADER_NFS_SUPPORT=no, loader(8) will still resort to using NFS. I've confirmed this on a couple occasions by defining PXE_DEBUG=1 and looking at the output. NFS, from what I can tell, is needed regardless because TFTP offers no way (AFAIK) of handling directory structures. This is speculation on my part, but the confirmation that there's no way to do a pure TFTP-based install has been verified. PR kern/74352 confirms this as well. > > If you tell boot2 to set the speed to 115200 (e.g. > > comconsole_speed="115200"), it won't work ? you'll still get 9600bps. > > Sure, since boot2 doesn't look at loader.conf. You're right, if you > have a hard disk putting -S115200 in /boot.config is the best bet, and > the loader will pick the speed setting up automatically. Which begs the question -- why is there some kind of association between the maximum speed a serial port can be set to and the speed the port *is* set to currently? I don't mind if FreeBSD defaults to 9600bps out of the box, but I *do* mind that I can't set that serial port's speed higher than 9600bps anywhere (including getty, stty, etc.) unless the boot blocks are rebuilt. > > But when PXE booting, there's only one piece of the bootstrap used: > > pxeboot(8). This means the only solution is to rebuild the boot > > blocks with a serial port speed that has the speed you want -- in this > > case, 115200bps. > > That shouldn't be the case; comconsole_speed="115200" should be > sufficient to set the speed. (Granted the port will start out at 9600 > until the conf file gets parsed.) Nope -- I've confirmed this on every system I've used during the past 12 years I've used FreeBSD. BOOT_COMCONSOLE_SPEED=9600 (the default) also sets the *maximum* speed permitted for that serial port to 9600, until the boot blocks are rebuilt. > How is the console speed handled when PXE booting other operating > systems? On Sparcs, I believe OpenBoot takes care of it for you (you tell it what speed you want, and it does the work for you). I'm not sure about other i386 platforms. -- | Jeremy Chadwickjdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB | ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Documentation: Installing FreeBSD 7.0 via serial console and PXE
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
on Tuesday, 29 January, 2008 at 11:09:13 Jeremy Chadwick ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
wrote:
> I spent 7-8 hours yesterday working on accomplishing ${SUBJECT}, and in
> the process wrote a document on it. There are scattered docs all over
> the Web describing how to do this, but all of them are either outdated
> or incorrect in some regards (no offence intended), hence what I wrote.
>
> http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install.html
This is great. However, shouldn't 192.168.1.200 be 192.168.1.100 for
newbox.home.lan in the "Common Paths/Terms Used" table?
Cheers,
Nick.
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Re: Documentation: Installing FreeBSD 7.0 via serial console and PXE
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 11:09:13AM -0800, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> I spent 7-8 hours yesterday working on accomplishing ${SUBJECT}, and in
> the process wrote a document on it. There are scattered docs all over
> the Web describing how to do this, but all of them are either outdated
> or incorrect in some regards (no offence intended), hence what I wrote.
>
> http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install.html
Thanks for putting this together; I've also noticed there's (sometimes
conflicting) documentation on this scattered around various places.
There are a few things in your document that I question though. For
example, you mention that installing FreeBSD via PXE requires
> iv. Knowledge of how TFTP and DHCP work, and how to debug them if
> they break,
> v. Intricate knowledge of configuring a DHCP server (common
> question: "what's the 'next-server' and 'option root-path'
> stuff? Is it needed? Why?")
I admit that I haven't tried installing Linux or Solaris via PXE, but I
find it interesting that such knowledge wouldn't be required for them.
> vii. ... not being able to do a complete 100% TFTP-based (e.g. no
> NFS) install
Well, you _can_ do a complete 100% TFTP-based install, but the loader
has to be compiled with an option. I agree that is rather unfortunate.
> If you tell boot2 to set the speed to 115200 (e.g.
> comconsole_speed="115200"), it won't work ? you'll still get 9600bps.
Sure, since boot2 doesn't look at loader.conf. You're right, if you
have a hard disk putting -S115200 in /boot.config is the best bet, and
the loader will pick the speed setting up automatically.
> But when PXE booting, there's only one piece of the bootstrap used:
> pxeboot(8). This means the only solution is to rebuild the boot
> blocks with a serial port speed that has the speed you want -- in this
> case, 115200bps.
That shouldn't be the case; comconsole_speed="115200" should be
sufficient to set the speed. (Granted the port will start out at 9600
until the conf file gets parsed.)
How is the console speed handled when PXE booting other operating
systems?
-Ed
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Documentation: Installing FreeBSD 7.0 via serial console and PXE
I spent 7-8 hours yesterday working on accomplishing ${SUBJECT}, and in
the process wrote a document on it. There are scattered docs all over
the Web describing how to do this, but all of them are either outdated
or incorrect in some regards (no offence intended), hence what I wrote.
http://jdc.parodius.com/freebsd/pxeboot_serial_install.html
I've CC'd freebsd-stable since I think more system administrators read
that list than freebsd-doc.
I've opened a PR for getting this doc, or pieces of it, added to the
handbook or documentation tree. Don't have the PR number yet.
I also encountered a reproducable bug with the mfs_root gzip loader (I
believe some people in the past have reported this too?), and will be
opening a separate PR for that.
--
| Jeremy Chadwickjdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
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