Kernel (2.4.X series) not doing the initial boot.
Stephane Enten
tuf at mmania.com
Sat Oct 6 16:52:23 CEST 2001
On Sat, Oct 06, 2001 at 12:38:32AM +0200, Jens Ruehmkorf wrote:
> Hi Stephane, hi all!
Hi!
> > However, when booting the client machine with this floppy,
> > "nothing happens", sniffing the network (with tcpdump
> > analyzing broadcasts and also packets from/to the MAC
> > address of the interface) showed that the kernel isn't
> > even doing the initial BOOTP/DHCP request.
>
> What's the exact error message that this kernel is complaining about
> (should be something about RPC and Root-NFS I think)? Did you use a
> vanilla 2.4.x from kernel.org or kernel-source-2.4.x from Herbert Xu?
The exact error message was:
"Root-NFS: No NFS server available, giving up.".
First thinking about a misconfiguration on the BOOTP/DHCP/TFTP/NFS
servers, then I did some sniffing and discovered that the box wasn't
sending any ethernet packet at all.
The kernels used for thoses test was vanilla 2.4.10 and 2.4.9-ac7.
> Could you send us a .config and a screendump as well?
I attach the .config used for the minimalist kernel used.
For the screendump ... I'll do some with a digital camera on Monday
(or before if I happen to be at the office this week-end).
Which information can be revelant ? Ethernet devices driver (Intel
EtherExpress Pro 100, BTW) was loaded and IP stack compiled in.
> Which kernel version do you use? Did you try 2.4.4 as well (I read on
> linux-kernel about some associated problems)?
I didn't try with 2.4.4 ... juste stock Linus 2.4.10 and Alan Cox's
2.4.9-ac7.
> On request I could send you a working nfsroot kernel I built / the .config
> I used to build.
Well, whynot, I'm sure I'll have to tweak the DHCP configuration somehow
later, but my first problem seems to be the kernel not even doing the
BOOTP/DHCP request.
So a kernel image know to success on that could help. However ... I did
doublecheck the kernel options for the IP_PNP and NFS/NFSROOT.
Stephane
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