Re: !!!checksum problem of network boot image for linux!!!

Hello Torsten, 

On Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:49:20 +0100
[email protected] wrote:
> That is not the problem. The initrd contains the right network driver  
> (e1000.ko) and after copying ifconfig (and some additional stuff) into  
> the initrd it is possible to set up the network interface eth0 with  
> "ifconfig eth0 192.9.200.155 netmask 255.255.255.192 up" but not with  
> DHCP!!!. 

you seem to have eliminated a couple of possible reasons for your
problems already, like mismatching network drivers, so let me try to
get the rest straight (and please correct me if I get something wrong).

You can prepare a kernel using wraplinux, but the parameters like
ip=dhcp seem to have no effect. Did you verify that these parameters
are passed correctly to the kernel in the first place? Kernel 2.6 will
display its command line during its boot messages, the relevant line
can be found after memory and ACPI info and starts with "Kernel command
line: ". If you use gpxe to pass parameters to the kernel directly as
suggested on this list, they have to end up there as well.

> I get the following error message:
> "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on  
> 192.9.200.137:/svr1/rootfilesystem/pilas5
> missing codepage or helper program, or other error

Since you have been using kernel 2.4 in the past, I assume your NFS and
DHCP servers remain unchanged and have been used before? You say you
are now using initrd, and Thomas suggested Suse Linux specific
tutorials to locate the trouble. I never use initrd to boot diskless
systems myself and avoid using kernel modules for the important parts
(network drivers, NFS, DHCP, ...) - it avoids a couple of potential
problems if everything needed to access your NFS root is already
contained in the kernel image. So I would expect that taking a vanilla
kernel from kernel.org, compiling it without modules for relevant parts
and preparing it with wraplinux might help you as well. If this kernel
does not display the following near the end of its output:

"Sending DHCP requests"
"IP-Config: Got DHCP answer"
"VFS: Mounted root (nfs filesystem) readonly on device"

you can start hunting for missing options in your kernel/NFS/DHCP
config and disregard initrd. If you suspect the kernel config, you
could mail the .config to me or the list for comparison - I have been
doing that same upgrade for my diskless systems about a year ago and
vaguely remember some relevant changes in defaults. You might start
by ensuring that "CONFIG_ROOT_NFS", "CONFIG_IP_PNP_DHCP" and
"CONFIG_IP_MULTICAST" are set, IIRC the multicast bit tripped me up
once...

In any case, etherboot / gpxe are probably not to blame for your
problems if they worked for kernel 2.4. 

Hope that helps, 
Jan

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