Re: problems mounting / via nfs using dhcp

[Glen Herrmannsfeldt <gah@mudhoney.mbt.washington.edu>]

>     too bad... Can etherboot pass parameters to the kernel loaded via
> tftp, telling it to use the x.y.z.b nfs server? IF so we can just disable
> bootp in the kernel compilation and use the ip addresses already
> discovered by etherboot during the initial dhcp query. OOPS seems that
> this is possible, as you stated below! Hurra! Let me try the mknbi-linux
> -i rom !!!


As well as I remember the diskless sun boot process,

RARP to find IP address.

TFTP to the source address of the rarp reply and load a file which
is the hex representation of the IP address.
(Usually a symbolic link to the boot program.)

The boot program then runs and uses RARP to find its IP address.

Then broadcast or to the source of the RARP reply to the bootparam
(rpc.bootparamd) to find the NFS server name and boot path.

Perform NFS mount of the root partition and load /vmunix and execute it.

Note that both the ROM and the boot program use RARP to get their address.

When /vmunix starts, it has an nfs root file system to read from.

This was before bootp, though.  bootp is probably better than rarp/bootparamd
for getting addresses and parameters to booting machines.

In this case, I believe all the boot parameters come from bootparamd.

-- glen