SUMMARY: Remote installing Solaris 8 on Netra X1 from NON-Sun bootserver?

Conclusion: it's just not possible to remotely install Solaris from anything
but a SPARC box.

Thanks to Rob Lyle and Steve Mickeler for telling me.

I'll quote Rob:
"I have a Solaris x86 boot server that
point blank refused to work.  Despite the "standardised" nature of BOOTP,
TFTP, NFS, etc. the kernel that got loaded croaked everytime when it got
pulled from an Intel SPARC box.  EXACTLY the same config on a SPARC based
Sol8 box worked first time."

I have no idea why.

And there were no offers "I've got an install server with a valid X1 image
hanging on the Net, you can use it" ;-) - so I'll try and talk my supplier
into it...



----- Original Message -----
From: "Roderik Muit" <roderik.muit@kosterengineering.nl>
To: <sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 17:27
Subject: Remote installing Solaris 8 on Netra X1 from NON-Sun bootserver?


> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to reinstall Solaris 8 on a Netra X1.
> The thing is, it's the only Sun we have in the house here.
> So I've been installing all kinds of stuff on a Linux server I have
> here to get the same functionality as Jumpstart. (rarp, bootp, tftp, nfs).
> It kind of works; the Netra boots over the network, loads many MBs of
> files - and then hangs because some config files are wrong.
>
> The problem is in getting the right root image together for the install.
>
> I read the docs about installing Solaris 8 remotely (which were also
> mentioned in a summary 23 Oct) - that I should run 'setup-install-server'
> from the first Solaris 8 CD, 'add_to_install_server' from the second CD,
and
> 'modify_install_server.netra' from the patch downloaded from Sun.
> However, these things are Solaris shell scripts which I cannot run on my
> Linux box. So I tried to copy all the files to the most logical places.
(In
> the case of CD 2 and the patch, I just copied the 'reloc' directory
contents
> into the file tree, without running all the installation scripts.) This
> probably means I now have an okay file structure, except that the config
> files are messed up.
>
> What happens: after loading a lot of files, the Netra hangs with the
> message:
> 'Cannot load drivers for /pci@1f,0/ethernet@c
> Can't load the root filesystem'
> I'm seeing that the last file the Netra loads from my install server is
> /platform/sun4u/kernel/drv/rootnex.conf. This file is empty. I suspect
this
> file should have some contents but I can't find any docs about it.
> (Nope - I'm not an experienced Solaris sysadmin...)
>
>
> Question: is there anyone who can help me get a proper root image together
> that the Netra can boot from & install Solaris 8?
> This can be by:
> - giving me (the location for) a proper root filesystem which I can copy
> onto my boot server
> - telling me what I should put into rootnex.conf to boot the Netra - if I
> don't need to fix another 100 config files I don't know things about...
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Roderik.
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