[Nelug] Netbooting a SPARC

[Richard Mortimer]

Random musings about netbooting a sparc (as discussed at tonights
meeting). I'm sure most of this is captured in the netboot howto.

Richard


o Install RARPD

  Then add an entry into /etc/ethers its either mac followed by ip/name
  or the other way round. i.e.

  mymachine	8:0:20:1:2:3

  This will allow the SPARC box to find its IP address

o Install tftpd. I'm not sure what directory is used by tftpd these days
(Solaris uses /tftpboot but I'm sure that linux will use something
different). Now you need to create a file in the /tftpboot equivalent
which contains the kernel image that you are loading. the filename is a
bit funny it is basically 8 hex digits (the IP address in hex) followed
by either nothing or .SUN4C .SUN4U .SUN4D .SUN4M

i.e. 192.168.1.100 is C0A80164.SUN4M

The file you want to use to boot is probably on your distro and is
called tftpboot32.img or tftpboot64.img  Use one of those and it boots
for you. The image should be around 4Meg in size (maybe smaller for 32
bit SPARC).

If you are getting stuck use ethereal (or similar) to snoop network
traffic and look for tftp packets and get the filename from there.

Obviously you just need to boot using

boot net

Richard


-- 
richm at oldelvet.org.uk