Installation problems with NFS mount on sun Fire X2100 with suspicious kernel behavior

[Lukáš Oliva]

  Hello,
this should not be the case, because the other machines (V20z) have
also two interfaces. I distinguish them very clearly by MAC address in
/etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf and /etc/ehters which I am used to verify in
bootlog and /var/log/daemon.log resp. syslog.

  This was also issue for me, but I found how to cope, so it is not
the case, I am affraid.

  Nevertheless, I did dump of packets by tcpdump and inspected it by
wireshark and there is something strange.
1) Comparing the successful installation with X2100, NFS communication
is further longer.
2) Although that DHCP server reports DHCP DISCOVER/REQUEST/OFFER/ACK
only BOOTP packets seems are present in tcpdump pcap file inspected by
wireshark.
3) From the output on the console screen no DNS0 and DNS1 is present
on IP-Check for X2100 but it is on V20z, the other seems to be okay.

When comparing both pcap files:
a) X2100 communication:
  4 BOOTP packets
  2 ARP (X2100 asks for faiserver's MAC, faiserver responds)
  16 378 TFTP packets
  3 ARP packets (faiserver asks who has X2100's IP in 1sec interval,
gets no response)
  1 BOOTP (broadcast request from X2100)
  1 RARP (the same as above)
  5 BOOTP packets
  2 ARP packets (X2100 asks who has its' address and got right
response from faiserver)
! 2 ICPM packets (2x Destination unreachable from X2100 to faiserver)
  2 BOOTP packets (BOOTPS request from X2100 and BOOTP reply from faiserver)
! 1 ICMP packet (Destination unreachable)
  23 TCP/Portmap packets (usually to sunrpc port)
  2 Mount packets (X2100 -> faiserver and back)
  71 TCP and NFS packets (Including two NFS NULL reply packets)
  1 NFS packet (faiserver -> X2100 FIN, ACK)
  1 NFS packet (X2100 -> faiserver RST)
  1 ARP packet (X2100 -> faiserver X2100 asks for faiserver's address,
faiserver responds)
  2 NFS packets (FIN, ACK)

b) Successful installation
  4 BOOTP packets
  15841 TFTP packets (different kernel and initramfs)
  3 ARP packets (faiserver asks who has X2100's IP in 1sec interval,
gets no response)
  6 BOOTP packets
  2 ARP packets (V20Z asks for faiservers' MAC, faiserver responds)
  22 TCP/Portmap packets
  2 Mount packets (faiserver -> X2100 FIN, ACK)
  21835  TCP/NFS/RPC packets
  2 MOUNT NULL packets
  2 MOUNT packets
    TCP/NFS/RPC packets ...

  Lukas


2009/11/20 Michael Tautschnig <mt at debian.org>:
>>   Hello all,
>> I used fai to install approximately 20 servers from Sun, but I am
>> completely unable to use it on Sun Fire X2100 machines (verified on
>> three of them). I use Debian Lenny on server (version 3.2.17~lenny1)
>> and I want it to be installed on all the machines. My problem is even
>> stranger, because fai seems to behave differently depending on kernel
>> I give the tftp to transfer.
>>
>> The TFTP part works okay and transfers vmlinuz and initrd.img files,
>> then systems boot with no apparent error. Nevertheless when it comes
>> to the point where it should ask for mounting NFS, it behaves strange.
>>
>
> [...] (serveral kernel versions)
>
> AFAIK the X2100 has at least two network interfaces; are you sure that this is
> not causing that kind of trouble? You might want to see some recent thread on
> linux-fai for dealing with multiple network interfaces.
>
> Best,
> Michael
>
>