[rescue] rescuing an ailing U10

[Arno Kletzander]

"Jonathan C. Patschke" <jp at celestrion.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Sep 2007, Andrew Gaylard wrote:
> > While on the topic, am I the only one who wishes that OpenBoot had a
> > TCP implementation?  I'd love to be able to boot boxes by simply
> > doing:
> >
> > setenv ip-address 1.2.3.4/24
> > setenv dns-address 1.2.3.2
> > setenv router-address 1.2.3.1
> > boot http://some.server.out.there.com/path/to/kernel

Yep, I had the same problem some time ago since I wanted to netboot a SPARCclassic in an environment where RARP was not available. I didn't need DNS and router since I was going for a TFTP server in the same subnet.

> Err, outside of the http part, you can.  You can specify specific local
> and remote IP addresses as arguments to 'boot net'.  The syntax differs
> between OBP v3 and OBP v4, and it's only available in the late releases
> of v3, -and- the syntax isn't widely documented, but, given an hour or
> so and a search engine, you can dig it up.

I wasn't aware of the later machines having that capability until lately, my original test object didn't in any case, so I dug into the OBP code concerned with the netboot operation and, with the help of der Mouse, patched it so that it would work - kinda. I didn't understand it all the way so it's by no means perfect or bulletproof (will still come up with "timeout waiting for RARP packet" if it gets impatient, for example), but I've netbooted a NetBSD bootloader with it several times.

I don't know just how often and how much the netboot code changed over time, but we did this stunt for two different OBP3 revisions; I'll be happy to try answering your questions about it if there are any.

-- 
Arno Kletzander

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