Netbooting with RPL

- S
- Sebastian
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
17 years ago

Mon, Mar 12, 2007 3:29 PM

Hello,

I got my hands on an old x86 style terminal (Etherminal does it write at boot time). This machine has an AMD PCnet 10/100 mbps network connection and is able to boot through it. But I don't know how to do, as it can't boot over PXE and I can't install a floppy drive.

How do I set up a server for netbooting? I can use Windows and Linux for it, but I want to boot a linux kernel.

There is the log the computer produces when trying to netboot.

Regards, Sebastian

To boot from Novell Server press 1 To boot from IBM LAN Server 2.x/3.x press 2 To boot from IBM LAN Server 4.x press 3 To boot from Microsoft Lan Manager Server press 4 To boot from first availible Server press 5 If no selection within 10 seconds, will use choice 5. Please, make your choice now.

RPL-ROM-ADR 00E0 C5FC 47CA RPL-ROM-IRQ 10 RPL-ROM-PIO 6000

RPL-ROM-FFC 1 (counting up)

- K
- Kevin Read
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
17 years ago

Mon, Mar 12, 2007 6:35 PM

Hi,

your should sniff the ethernet line at bootup and see what protocol it speaks.

- U
- Unknown
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
17 years ago

Tue, Mar 13, 2007 5:06 PM

Try these. The original netware ROMS booted a floppy disk image via ethernet - the later ones uses IPX.

These might boot it ... maybe ..

formatting link

- S
- Sebastian
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
17 years ago

Fri, Mar 23, 2007 5:32 PM

Hello,

I got a solution for my problem, although it isn't easy; flashing the BIOS didn't work at all (no version executed the Option ROM, but instead disabled Novell's one - even if I only removed the full-screen logo).

Novell's rom tries to boot via RPL, so I had to put up a rpld. It doesn't work to boot any linux kernel (neither bzImage nor zImage), but I can serve an etherboot rom in zrom format. My /etc/rpld.conf looks like this:

HOST { ethernet = 00:ma:ca:dd:re:ss; (the real mac goes here, of course) FILE { path = "/root/pcnet32.zrom"; load = 0x1000; }; execute = 0x1006; };

Etherboot grabs an ip off the dhcp server and then loads pxelinux.0 using tftp. Then, a memdisk (as kernel) and a dos boot floppy (as initrd) is loaded and executed. So I can repair (or at least boot) the system, when it won't do it alone. Because etherboot is flexible, there are many possibilities, including a diskless boot. Maybe this helps people in similar situations.

Regards, Sebastian