[9fans] PXE boot?

[9fans] PXE boot?

[andrey mirtchovski]

Hi,

Has anyone ever booted plan9 via PXE successfully? I have a diskless box
here that I'm trying to feed a plan9 (9load) kernel to, but appear to am
missing something -- it just gives me the blinkenkursor after it loads up
9load...

Any suggestions are welcome.

Andrey

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[David Presotto]

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Where do you get a plan9.ini from during the PXE boot?  I was just
wondering how I would do it when your mail arrived.

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From: andrey mirtchovski <mirtchov@cpsc.ucalgary.ca>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: [9fans] PXE boot?
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 11:31:44 -0600 (MDT)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0305281128090.1170-100000@fbsd.cpsc.ucalgary.ca>

Hi,

Has anyone ever booted plan9 via PXE successfully? I have a diskless box
here that I'm trying to feed a plan9 (9load) kernel to, but appear to am
missing something -- it just gives me the blinkenkursor after it loads up
9load...

Any suggestions are welcome.

Andrey

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[andrey mirtchovski]

On Wed, 28 May 2003, David Presotto wrote:

> Where do you get a plan9.ini from during the PXE boot?  I was just
> wondering how I would do it when your mail arrived.

I don't... I still don't have it clear in my mind how I would get a machine
to boot as a diskless cpu server just through PXE. I was just trying to see
if the PXE would even jump to 9load successfully.

I need to experiment a bit more with this -- currently I'm staring at a
blank screen with just the DHCP information on (if I attempt to load a
9pcauth kernel directly the machine reboots, which is just what I
expected). I need to read more about PXE to find out whether it expects 9load
to be linked at a specific address or not. I also see that it attempts to pass
options to tftpd, which the red-hat daemon does not expect (dhcp server is
linux, just can't a dedicated plan9 machine)...

Too bad there are no postcards around here :(...

andrey

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[ron minnich]

I thought that PXE could only handle a 32-KB boot image. I have heard this
quite a few times. I read the standard years ago but was sufficiently
impressed that the standard was filed in the manner it deserved, so I no
longer have access to it.

Anyway, if my 32KB guess is true, you may have to have PXE load etherboot,
and then have etherboot load 9load in the way that you did last summer at
LANL.

See this: http://news.gw.com/freebsd.cluster/275 for a discussion of some
PXE limitations.

I just did some quick looking round and just about everything that uses
PXE uses it to boot a little stub thing (etherboot, etc.) that in turn
boots the real thing.

You may want to get etherboot, build it with the PXE options, and see how
far you get.

ron

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[David Presotto]

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The 32k limitation doesn't seem to be true.  The limitiation is architecture
dependent and the PC seems to have chosen infinite, though there is a
practical limit of (640-28)K because of where things get loaded.  I've
got 9load saying hello but it crashes when it jumps to 32 bit mode.
My forehead is getting bloodier by the minute.

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From: ron minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] PXE boot?
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 12:58:40 -0600 (MDT)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0305281253160.26256-100000@maxroach.lanl.gov>

I thought that PXE could only handle a 32-KB boot image. I have heard this
quite a few times. I read the standard years ago but was sufficiently
impressed that the standard was filed in the manner it deserved, so I no
longer have access to it.

Anyway, if my 32KB guess is true, you may have to have PXE load etherboot,
and then have etherboot load 9load in the way that you did last summer at
LANL.

See this: http://news.gw.com/freebsd.cluster/275 for a discussion of some
PXE limitations.

I just did some quick looking round and just about everything that uses
PXE uses it to boot a little stub thing (etherboot, etc.) that in turn
boots the real thing.

You may want to get etherboot, build it with the PXE options, and see how
far you get.

ron

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[ron minnich]

On Fri, 30 May 2003, David Presotto wrote:

> The 32k limitation doesn't seem to be true.  The limitiation is architecture
> dependent and the PC seems to have chosen infinite, though there is a
> practical limit of (640-28)K because of where things get loaded.  I've
> got 9load saying hello but it crashes when it jumps to 32 bit mode.

ah, good news. Not about your forehead, but about the 32k limitation.

Maybe it was from very early versions, not sure.

ron

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[andrey mirtchovski]

On Fri, 30 May 2003, David Presotto wrote:

> The 32k limitation doesn't seem to be true.  The limitiation is architecture
> dependent and the PC seems to have chosen infinite, though there is a
> practical limit of (640-28)K because of where things get loaded.  I've
> got 9load saying hello but it crashes when it jumps to 32 bit mode.
> My forehead is getting bloodier by the minute.
>

i'm there too. i gave up though -- etherboot won't recognize the gigabit
ethernet card on this box, so i'm waiting until i get a card etherboot can
use.

another suggestion: why not do a three-stage boot? the dhcp configuration for
etherboot (linux dhcp, though, not sure if supported in plan9) has this
interesting option:

        if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "PXEClient" {
            filename "/tftpboot/etherboot";
        } else {
            filename "/tftpboot/9load";
        }

the first time it loads the etherboot kernel, which then repeats the same
operation, but is this time given a 9load, which is masked as a linux kernel
image (this is what Ron uses to boot the small solid-state cluster). then
9load could proceed loading any way it likes (still no plan9.ini at this
point, though). this way there is no restriction on the size of the 9load
image.

I can't test this right now, unfortunately.

andrey

ps: i'm aiming for an even better setup -- PXE downloads etherboot through
the gige card, etherboot downloads 9load through a 100baseT rtl card i've
stuck in the machine just for that purpose, 9load does something else that i
haven't decided upon yet.

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[ron minnich]

On Fri, 30 May 2003, andrey mirtchovski wrote:

> i'm there too. i gave up though -- etherboot won't recognize the gigabit
> ethernet card on this box, so i'm waiting until i get a card etherboot can
> use.

ah, etherboot. such pain.

you wanna go gross? you can do this:

- boot linux
- have linux kexec the plan9 loader, after we convert it into an elfimage

ah, the horror, linux is now a plan9 loader bootstrap. What do you think?

It would work. Or we convert the plan9 kernel to an elfimage, pass it to
linux, and let linux boot plan9. That will work too.

> the first time it loads the etherboot kernel, which then repeats the same
> operation, but is this time given a 9load, which is masked as a linux kernel
> image (this is what Ron uses to boot the small solid-state cluster). then
> 9load could proceed loading any way it likes (still no plan9.ini at this
> point, though). this way there is no restriction on the size of the 9load
> image.

actually 9load is an elfimage, not masked as a linux kernel image. Subtle
but important difference: you can conceivably generate elfimages on your
plan9 box, but linux kernel images? the horror.

andrey, you can get 1 GHZ M-EPIA cards for $100, run linuxbios, put 9load
in flash, and forget etherboot.

Why not do that?

ron

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[boyd, rounin]

> ah, the horror, linux is now a plan9 loader bootstrap. What do you think?

in some deluded fit of dementia i bought some magazine in sweden
and installed redhat on my 600 series vaio; dual boot lunix/windows.

you could just not kill it.  i had to format the whole damn disk to get on
with my plan 9 plans.

note to self:  take redhat cd's outdoors somewhere and waste 'em
with my 'MP5-A5' -- a 30 round clip, full auto, 700rpm,  should do it.

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[ron minnich]

On Fri, 30 May 2003, boyd, rounin wrote:

> note to self:  take redhat cd's outdoors somewhere and waste 'em
> with my 'MP5-A5' -- a 30 round clip, full auto, 700rpm,  should do it.

might work on spammers too.

I find the microwave much more fun for RedHat disks

ron

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[boyd, rounin]

> I find the microwave much more fun for RedHat disks

http://www.insultant.net/banks/hsbc

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[andrey mirtchovski]

On Fri, 30 May 2003, ron minnich wrote:

> andrey, you can get 1 GHZ M-EPIA cards for $100, run linuxbios, put 9load
> in flash, and forget etherboot.
>

i can't have dedicated plan9 machines here -- the linux projects for other
people are more important. that's why i resort to running several cpu
servers under vmware whenever i want to do anything in a non-standalone
plan9 environment.

andrey

Re: [9fans] PXE boot?

[Richard Miller]

rminnich@lanl.gov suggests:

> andrey, you can get 1 GHZ M-EPIA cards for $100, run linuxbios, put 9load
> in flash, and forget etherboot.

A few months ago when similar motherboards were mentioned, nigel@9fs.org said:

> Beware the Via C3 Eden ITX motherboard. Neither the ethernet,
> vga, or audio are supported.
>
> I have (partial) solutions.

Nigel, if you're reading this can you elaborate on your solutions?

-- Richard

RE: [9fans] PXE boot?

[Nigel Roles]

9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu wrote:
> rminnich@lanl.gov suggests:
>
>> andrey, you can get 1 GHZ M-EPIA cards for $100, run linuxbios, put
>> 9load in flash, and forget etherboot.
>
> A few months ago when similar motherboards were mentioned,
> nigel@9fs.org said:
>
>> Beware the Via C3 Eden ITX motherboard. Neither the ethernet, vga,
>> or audio are supported.
>>
>> I have (partial) solutions.
>
> Nigel, if you're reading this can you elaborate on your solutions?
>
> -- Richard

It all depends on the chipset used. Some of the faster boards
have better devices.

On my board, I have Via's own ethernet (Rhine II), a trident
cyber type vga, and Via's own audio.

I have a Rhine II driver, but there is enough fud on the FreeBSD
mailing lists about the reliability of the silicon and the documentation
is so poor I don't feel very confident about the driver.

I struggled for a long time with the video without getting it to
work at high resolutions, so have parked it for a bit.

The Plan 9 audio interface only supports soundblaster, and there
is no higher level interface to allow other styles, a la devether.c.
The Via audio pretends to be soundblaster pro, but actually only
has the registers. Instead, the driver catches accesses to the
registers and maps it to the real PCI device. Again, I did some
work on this, but have stopped for now.

RE: [9fans] PXE boot?

[lucio]

Nigel Roles says:
>
> I have a Rhine II driver, but there is enough fud on the FreeBSD
> mailing lists about the reliability of the silicon and the documentation
> is so poor I don't feel very confident about the driver.
>
You'll get poor performance at worst, in my opinion.  While fidgetting
with the PCNet driver, I realised (mistakenly, maybe) that once the
driver delivers integral ethernet packets in both directions, you're
done.  The next layers take care of making sure there's no additional
corruption.  Of course, efficiency may go out the window :-)

> The Plan 9 audio interface only supports soundblaster, and there
> is no higher level interface to allow other styles, a la devether.c.
> The Via audio pretends to be soundblaster pro, but actually only
> has the registers. Instead, the driver catches accesses to the
> registers and maps it to the real PCI device. Again, I did some
> work on this, but have stopped for now.

Sounds like a good project, putting in place a multimedia
infrastructure that is workable.  All the other OSes need to paint
themselves out of a legacy corner, Plan 9 may be luckier.

++L