I am the lucky(?) owner of an IBM RS6000 43P-133 aka the 7248 "Carolina"
PReP workstation. They run Debian quite happily from a dist-upgraded
woody install a few years ago if I boot them.
Now, a few days ago, I needed to do some testing on PPC, so I installed
f9 on an old B50 that I had tossed in the attic. I installed cleanly out
of the box. Inspired, I dug out one of the 7248s and tried to boot one
of them with the f9 boot iso too. It didn't work, of course, as the
bootloader on the CD is yaboot. In the "old days", the typical way to
boot this boxes was by a floppy with the prep bootloader built on top of
the kernel image. The Fedora installation kernel is some 4.5MB, and
won't fit on a floppy.
So I thought about netbooting. According to the firmware info (nope, no
OpenFirmware on this box), it is capable of doing a bootp/tftp boot. So
I tried that. I set up tftpd and dhcpd on the B50, and put the netboot
image in /var/lib/tftpboot. From another box on the network, I checked
that tftp worked as expected. It did.
Looking at the logs, it seems that the 7248 gets an ip address, starts
downloading the kernel by tftp, but then gives up after a few packages.
See below for dhcpd. conf and some logs for several retries. What am I
doing wrong?
And yet another question: Does the installation kernel have the old prep
bootloader added on top? If not, how can it boot the 7248 at all?
Ingvar
# dhcpd.conf
ddns-update-style none;
ignore client-updates;
allow bootp;
allow booting;
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 192.168.1.108 192.168.1.126;
}
host horten {
filename "ppc32.img";
server-name "192.168.1.55";
hardware ethernet 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da;
fixed-address 192.168.1.98;
}
#EOF
syslog dump:
Oct 6 21:13:41 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da via eth0
Oct 6 21:13:41 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.98 to horten
(08:00:5a:f8:9b:da) via eth0
Oct 6 21:13:41 kvelde xinetd[1717]: START: tftp pid=2677 from=192.168.1.98
Oct 6 21:13:41 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da via eth0
Oct 6 21:13:41 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.98 to horten
(08:00:5a:f8:9b:da) via eth0
Oct 6 21:18:01 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da via eth0
Oct 6 21:18:01 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.98 to horten
(08:00:5a:f8:9b:da) via eth0
Oct 6 21:19:04 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da via eth0
Oct 6 21:19:04 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.98 to horten
(08:00:5a:f8:9b:da) via eth0
Oct 6 21:19:26 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da via eth0
Oct 6 21:19:26 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.98 to horten
(08:00:5a:f8:9b:da) via eth0
Oct 6 21:34:26 kvelde xinetd[1717]: EXIT: tftp status=0 pid=2677
duration=1245(sec)
More or less matching tcpdump:
IP 0.0.0.0.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps: BOOTP/DHCP, Request from
08:00:5a:f8:9b:da, length 300
IP 192.168.1.55.bootps > 192.168.1.98.bootpc: BOOTP/DHCP, Reply, length 300
arp who-has 192.168.1.55 tell 192.168.1.98
arp reply 192.168.1.55 is-at 00:04:ac:97:8c:91
IP 192.168.1.98.9394 > 192.168.1.55.tftp: 18 RRQ "ppc32.img" octet
IP 192.168.1.55.36209 > 192.168.1.98.9394: UDP, length 516
IP 192.168.1.98.9394 > 192.168.1.55.36209: UDP, length 4
IP 192.168.1.55.36209 > 192.168.1.98.9394: UDP, length 516
IP 192.168.1.98.9394 > 192.168.1.55.36209: UDP, length 4
IP 192.168.1.55.36209 > 192.168.1.98.9394: UDP, length 516
IP 192.168.1.98.9394 > 192.168.1.55.36209: UDP, length 5
IP 0.0.0.0.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps: BOOTP/DHCP, Request from
08:00:5a:f8:9b:da, length 300
IP 192.168.1.55.bootps > 192.168.1.98.bootpc: BOOTP/DHCP, Reply, length 300
arp who-has 192.168.1.55 tell 192.168.1.98
arp reply 192.168.1.55 is-at 00:04:ac:97:8c:91
IP 192.168.1.98.22590 > 192.168.1.55.tftp: 18 RRQ "ppc32.img" octet
IP 192.168.1.55.34725 > 192.168.1.98.22590: UDP, length 516
IP 192.168.1.98.22590 > 192.168.1.55.34725: UDP, length 5
IP 0.0.0.0.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps: BOOTP/DHCP, Request from
08:00:5a:f8:9b:da, length 300
IP 192.168.1.55.bootps > 192.168.1.98.bootpc: BOOTP/DHCP, Reply, length 300
arp who-has 192.168.1.55 tell 192.168.1.98
arp reply 192.168.1.55 is-at 00:04:ac:97:8c:91
IP 192.168.1.98.22530 > 192.168.1.55.tftp: 18 RRQ "ppc32.img" octet
IP 192.168.1.55.33150 > 192.168.1.98.22530: UDP, length 516
IP 192.168.1.98.22530 > 192.168.1.55.33150: UDP, length 5
