Re: Bootblock not loading?

[Phil Gregory <pgreg430@neors.cat.cc.md.us>]

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Pardon if this comes up twice.  If it dies, I'll know not to post to the
newsgroup and the mailing list at the same time.

> > I have things set up as per the netboot instructions, but when I attempt
> > to boot from the netboot floppy, it connects to the bootp server and then
> > fails with the error, "cannot load bootblock from disk".
> 
> This message appears if the bootrom tries to load an operating system from
> a disk instead of the network, and the specified disk doesn't contain a
> valid boot sector or partition table.

That's what I thought it sounded like, but there are a total of two disks
in that computer.  One's a hard drive with Win98 on it, and the other's
the boot floppy.

> > I've set things up in /etc/bootptab.
> 
> How does the entry for your client look like?

Here's the relevant (and only) entry:

tardis.:ht=ethernet:vm=auto:ha=006097637735:ip=192.168.1.3:\
        :hd=/netboot:bf=bootImage:rp=/netboot:\
        :ds=192.168.1.1:\
        :sm=255.255.255.0:\
        :gw=192.168.1.1:\
        :ts=192.168.1.1:


> It should contain a 'bf'
> tag which gives the exact pathname to your boot image file. Additionally
> it can be a relative path to the directory given by the 'hd' tag, if that's
> used. For testing you should specify a full pathname like:
> 
> 	bf=/test/path/bootImage

I tried this.  It resulted in the bootfloppy reporting "File Name:
/netboot/netboot/bootImage".  I really don't think that the problem is
around here, because I'm not seeing any TFTP packets on the network.

> A boot sector will be loaded instead of a TFTP image if this path starts
> with the string "/dev/".

I don't think that I'd want that.  The only two boot sectors available on
the machine are the floppy and a Win98 hard drive.  I'm trying to run
Linux on the machine without touching the hard drive.

Again, I'm using kernel 2.0.33.  I'm not entirely sure how to get the
version on the other relevent files (inetd, bootpd, tftpd).  The -h,
- --help, -v, and --version options seem not to work.  At this point, I'm
not even sure where to look further for problems.

                                ---------------
Windows 95 --- The only OS with the Year 2000 bug built into its name
                                ---------------
                                 Phil Gregory
                                     DNRC
                              phil_g@geocities.com
                        -------------------------------
                         (E-mail me for my public key)



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