[parisc-linux] Re: Installing Debian on an 712/80

[Steve Bromwich]

On Thu, 1 Jan 2004, Matthew Wilcox wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 23, 2003 at 10:20:01AM -0500, Brian Barber wrote:
>
> > I've done some more digging and come up with the following obstacles:
> > 1) HP machines require active SCSI termination, hence the reason why I could not boot from my (borrowed) external SCSI CD-ROM (passive terminator only)
>
> I'm not sure that's true, but they do require certain CD drives to
> boot from.  I forget the details; something to do with 2k vs 512 byte
> sector sizes.

The industry standard (ie, IBM PC world) is 2048 byte sectors, whereas HP
(and Sun) use 512 byte sectors. If you don't have a drive that supports
512 byte sectors, you won't get anywhere. See the post I made (and
subsequent informative posts from others) at
http://lists.parisc-linux.org/pipermail/parisc-linux/2003-November/021645.html
for more details.

> > If I am correct (jump in here), I am left with bootp/tftp as the only
> > means of booting the machine.  If I take this route, I copy lifimage
> > to the boot directory of my tftp server.  This is where I am stuck.
> > There is no documentation I can find (or discern) that walks one through
> > an install from a tftp-booted machine.  Is there a way for me to mount
> > the Debain CD via nfs and launch the installer from there?

When you boot via tftp you still need a way to communicate with the box,
either using a keyboard and monitor, or (more commonly) via serial
console. Is this the answer to the question you're asking?

Alternatively, when you boot the lifimage I *think* you get the option of
installing from pre-mounted directory (somewhat useless via serial console
- I don't think there's any way to get a shell prompt to premount a
directory), NFS, HTTP or FTP - ie, the usual Debian install methodology. I
suspect your best bet is over NFS.

> I'd like to just point you at the boot HOWTO [1], but it doesn't seem
> to cover this step.  It only covers booting the kernel, not setting up
> your NFS root.  I've had mixed success with using debootstrap to populate
> a minimal nfsroot, then updating to sid and installing new packages.

One thing I noticed is that the config given is using inetd (I use xinetd)
and appears to be using the "standard" tftp, rather than hpa's tftpd. I
recently set up a diskless J200 (imaginatively named "j200"), the config I
used on the server is as follows:

dhcpd.conf:

allow bootp;
option domain-name "fop.ns.ca";
option domain-name-servers 10.2.1.10;
option log-servers 10.2.1.10;
authoritative;
use-host-decl-names on;

host j200 {
  hardware ethernet 08:00:09:8c:d1:41;
  filename "lifimage";
  server-name "10.2.1.10";
  fixed-address 10.2.1.21;
  option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
  option broadcast-address 10.2.1.255;
  option routers 10.2.1.200;
  option domain-name "fop.ns.ca";
  option root-path "10.2.1.21:/j200";
}


xinetd.conf:

service tftp
{
       socket_type     = dgram
       protocol        = udp
       wait            = yes
       user            = root
       #server         = /usr/sbin/tcpd
       #server_args    = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd /tftpboot
       server          = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
       server_args     = -v -s /tftpboot
       disable         = no
}


One tip I noticed is it takes a dog's age to boot with serial console set
to 9600. If you're going to do a serial console, I'd recommend upping the
rate to 19200.

I'm off to Boston tomorrow for a week and a half, but if you're still
having troubles when I get back I can fire up the J200 and write up a
step-by-step if it'd help.

Cheers, Steve