Re: net booting using standard manufacturers bootroms

[Jens Ruehmkorf <ruehmkorf@informatik.Uni-Koeln.DE>]

On Wed, 10 Feb 1999, John Finlay wrote:

finlay >  Where should I look for info on net booting linux using the
finlay >  bootroms available from the NIC card manufacturers? I have a
finlay >  3com MBA bootrom for my 3c905B-TX but no info on how to boot
finlay >  linux using it. 
You can use the Managed Boot Agent from 3Com, but that is not very
elegant.  I prefer to use netboot, but here is a brief how-to:
1. You have to create a linux-bootdisk with the kernel you prefer using a
MS-DOS formatted disc (use mformat to format the disc and syslinux to make
a linux-bootdisc).  imagegen can`t cope with minix and such filesystems.
2. Use the program, that came with MBA
imagegen /t a: image.dat
(it`s running under DOS).
3. transfer it to your /tftpboot-directory.  That`s it.

To avoid having to use DOS whenever you want to build a new image:
1. Save the last image --> bootImage
2. dd if=/dev/fd0 of=bootImage bs=1024 seek=1
where /dev/fd0 is your new bootdisk (you created using mformat and
syslinux)

This is the only way I found out to use something else than netboot, but
I myself prefer netboot.

finlay >  There seem to be projects for netbooting that require burning a
finlay >  PROM but I'd prefer not to do that. 

Besides using MBA burning an EPROM is the only other way to boot Linux.
To build an EPROM with netboot, use the packetdriver, that came with your
card (3c90xpd.com) together with the switch /d.  That should work.

Greetings

Jens

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