[SunRescue] Diskless Workstations

[mike mangino]

 I net boot my sun3/80 from a solaris 7 machine. Essentially what you do is as follows.

remove the comment from the line in /etc/inetd.conf that contains a listing for tftp

Add a line to /etc/ethers that looks like the following, MAC address name
08:00:20:01:02:03   sun380

The mac address should display on boot. If not, use snoop to look for the address in the rarp broadcast packets.

Add a line to /etc/hosts with a name that corresponds to the new diskless machine. It should match the line in /etc/ethers

Start in.rarpd (/usr/sbin/in.rarpd -a)


Add a line to /etc/bootparams for the machinei
sun380   gateway=192.168.1.2 root=ultra:/opt/export/sun3/sun380/root swap=ultra:/opt/export/sun3/sun380/swap dump=ultra:/opt/export/sun3/sun380/dump

You need at least root, swap and dump. Those are paths to the files they will use. The swap file should be created with mkfile, the dumpfile is a copy of the swap file (I don't know what it does, but it works)

start bootparamd (/usr/sbin/in.bootparamd)

Add entries for NFS mounting the appropriate shares. You need to share root, swap and dump at least. My config looks like :
share -F nfs -o rw=sun380,root=sun380 -d "Sun3X root" /opt/export/sun3/sun380/root
share -F nfs -o rw=sun380,root=sun380 -d "Sun3X swap" /opt/export/sun3/sun380/swap
share -F nfs -o rw=sun380,root=sun380 -d "Sun3X swap" /opt/export/sun3/sun380/dump

restart nfs

Boot your machine and monitor the network with snoop. It should give you information about any errorsyou encounter. If you get stuck, feel free to call me at 299-4322 (I'm in Columbus as well)

Mike
-- 
Mike Mangino                   Senior Programmer/Analyst
mangino at cis.ohio-state.edu     manginom at oclc.org
Home: (614) 299-4322           Work: (614) 764-6280