[Mark Hedges]

Reese, Allen wrote:
> I'm going through the iterations of installing and using FAI for the first
> time and am encountering some of the usual pitfalls and configuration
> issues.  I've stumbled upon something, though that I can't seem to grasp
> dealing with the way the fai-kernel deals with DHCP vs. the way the current
> debian kernel does and was wondering if any of you, out there, could help.
> 
> Here's my problem.  I have one machine acting as an install server (running
> debian and FAI) and another that will be acting as a client (previously
> loaded with debian as well).  I can create the boot floppy fine, and the
> client machine reads it and loads the kernel.  Everything is fine up to this
> point.  When it comes time for the DHCP requests to be made, the client sits
> there spewing:
> 
> Sending DHCP requests ........ Timed out!
> IP-Config: Retrying forever (NFS root)...
> 
> over and over.  Now, when I have the DHCPD daemon running on the server
> machine, I'm seeing DHCPDISCOVER's and DHCPOFFER's being made but no
> DHCPREQUEST's coming from the client although the machine says it's sending
> requests.
> I thought this was odd, so to try to narrow down where the problem was, I
> took the floppy out of the drive and let the machine come up under it's
> previous configuration (debian installation) and watched the DHCPD log from
> the install server...
> 
> Sure enough, I saw DHCPDISCOVER, DHCPOFFER, DHCPREQUEST, and DHCPACK for the
> client machine.  It came up fine and has the desired IP address and
> everything.  So from what I gathered here, is that with the install client
> allowed to boot up under it's own kernel, it's able to establish a
> connection with the install server and obtain an IP.  However, with the FAI
> boot floppy, it sits there and "supposedly" spins on DHCPREQUESTs forever,
> however I'm not seeing it at all on the install server.
> 
> Is there something I'm missing here?  Does the FAI boot floppy kernel have
> different DHCP parameters in it than a normal kernel and how would I go
> about changing the FAI-kernel DHCP parameters to match those that would be
> on the install client.
> 
> Sorry if I seem like I'm going off on this, I've been messing with this for
> a long time, and am starting to feel a little wrapped around the axle, here.
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated,
> 

I think I came up against this when the stock kernel didn't configure
my ethernet driver right, making a transmit/receive error.  What card is it?
Maybe you need a custom install kernel.  When working with floppies I made
one that had most stuff modular but all ethernet drivers built-in.  It 
barely
fit and took some tweaking.  Now I use Niall Young's fai-bootcd stuff.

--mark--


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