If your machine is connected to a local area network, you may be able to boot it over the network from another machine, using TFTP. If you intend to boot the installation system from another machine, the boot files will need to be placed in specific locations on that machine, and the machine configured to support booting of your specific machine.
You need to setup a TFTP server, and for CATS machines, a BOOTP server .
Unlike the Open Firmware found on Sparc and PowerPC machines, the SRM console will not use RARP to obtain its IP address, and therefore you must use BOOTP for net booting your Alpha. You can also enter the IP configuration for network interfaces directly in the SRM console. [3]
The Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is used to serve the boot image to the client. Theoretically, any server, on any platform, which implements these protocols, may be used. In the examples in this section, we shall provide commands for SunOS 4.x, SunOS 5.x (a.k.a. Solaris), and GNU/Linux.
To get the TFTP server ready to go, you should first make sure that tftpd is enabled. This is usually enabled by having the following line in /etc/inetd.conf:
tftp dgram udp wait root /usr/sbin/tcpd in.tftpd /tftpboot |
Look in that file and remember the directory which is used as the argument of in.tftpd; you'll need that below. The -l argument enables some versions of in.tftpd to log all requests to the system logs; this is useful for diagnosing boot errors. If you've had to change /etc/inetd.conf, you'll have to notify the running inetd process that the file has changed. On a Debian machine, run /etc/init.d/inetd reload (for slink/2.1 and older systems use /etc/init.d/netbase reload); on other machines, find out the process ID for inetd, and run kill -HUP inetd-pid.
Next, place the TFTP boot image you need, as found in Sección 4.2.3, “Where to Find Installation Files”, in the tftpd boot image directory. Generally, this directory will be /tftpboot. You'll have to make a link from that file to the file which tftpd will use for booting a particular client. Unfortunately, the file name is determined by the TFTP client, and there are no strong standards.
Often, the file that the TFTP client will look for is client-ip-in-hexclient-architecture. To compute client-ip-in-hex, take each byte of the client IP address and translate it into hexadecimal notation. If you have a machine handy with the bc program, you can use the program. First issue the obase=16 command to set the output to hex, then enter the individual components of the client IP one at a time. As for client-architecture, try out some values.
On Alpha, you must specify the filename (as a relative path to the boot image directory) using the -file argument to the SRM boot command, or by setting the BOOT_FILE environment variable. Alternatively, the filename can be given via BOOTP (in ISC dhcpd, use the filename directive). Unlike Open Firmware, there is no default filename on SRM, so you must specify a filename by either one of these methods.
On some systems, the standard installation RAMdisk, combined with the memory requirements of the TFTP boot image, cannot fit in memory. In this case, you can still install using TFTP, you'll just have to go through the additional step of NFS mounting your root directory over the network as well. This type of setup is also appropriate for diskless or dataless clients.
First, follow all the steps above in Sección 4.4, “Preparing Files for TFTP Net Booting”.
Copy the Linux kernel image on your TFTP server using the a.out image for the architecture you are booting.
Untar the root archive on your NFS server (can be the same system as your TFTP server):
# cd /tftpboot # tar xvzf root.tar.gz |
Be sure to use the GNU tar (other tar programs, like the SunOS one, badly handle devices as plain files).
Export your /tftpboot/debian-sparc-root directory with root access to your client. E.g., add the following line to /etc/exports (GNU/Linux syntax, should be similar for SunOS):
/tftpboot/debian-sparc-root client(rw,no_root_squash) |
NOTE: "client" is the host name or IP address recognized by the server for the system you are booting.
Create a symbolic link from your client IP address in dotted notation to debian-sparc-root in the /tftpboot directory. For example, if the client IP address is 192.168.1.3, do
# ln -s debian-sparc-root 192.168.1.3 |
Installing with TFTP and NFS Root is similar to Sección 4.4.3, “TFTP Installation for Low-Memory Systems” because you don't want to load the RAMdisk anymore but boot from the newly created NFS-root file system. You then need to replace the symlink to the tftpboot image by a symlink to the kernel image (for example, linux-a.out).
RARP/TFTP requires all daemons to be running on the same server (the workstation is sending a TFTP request back to the server that replied to its previous RARP request).
[3] Alpha systems can also be net-booted using the DECNet MOP (Maintenance Operations Protocol), but this is not covered here. Presumably, your local OpenVMS operator will be happy to assist you should you have some burning need to use MOP to boot Linux on your Alpha.