Re: Can you MOP boot an install kernel directly?

On 2025-08-05 16:25, Perry Metzger wrote:
> On 8/5/25 09:58, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2025-08-05 15:12, Perry Metzger wrote:
>>> On 8/4/25 22:27, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> The boot blocks don't currently do tftp though, and as it stands 
>>>>> Ragge's patches to let you MOP boot the kernel directly are not in 
>>>>> place.
>>>>
>>>> The network booting (MOP) pulls in the boot program (/boot), and 
>>>> that one then uses dhcp and tftp to pull in the kernel, and then off 
>>>> it goes.
>>>
>>> No. The boot program currently lets you netboot off of NFS. It does 
>>> not have a tftp boot option.
>>
>> Hmm. I had a recollection that it also did tftp, but maybe I'm 
>> misremembering, or that have changed over time.
>>
>> But I think that is actually better. You probably want nfs either way, 
>> so then we're just down to dhcp and nfs, which you would want anyway.
> 
> I don't want nfs at all. I want to boot an INSTALL kernel with a ramdisk 
> and then proceed to format the local drives and download the sets into 
> them. It's really easy to just set up a MOP server, I need a dhcp server 
> anyway, I don't want to set up rarpd, rpc.bootparamd, and an NFS server 
> just to do installs.

Ok. Gotcha. Yeah, if you don't want NFS at all, then MOP would be an 
interesting and very simple and straight forward option.

You never need rarp though, nor did I ever need rpc.bootparamd when 
netbooting a VAX. All information needed comes through DHCP, and then 
you got into what the system used, which for me have usually been nfs 
and local disk. But as you mention, the install kernel itself is just 
ramdisk based. So apart from DHCP, there is just the need to get the 
image somehow. I think it would be a nice/interesting thing to make boot 
be able to use MOP to request the kernel image. Replacing DHCP by MOP 
might also be possible, but that seems like a less prioritized topic.

So - someone just needs to write a module for getting an image over MOP 
in boot then. :-)

   Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
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