nfsroot problem

Damir Anicic Damir.Anicic at psi.ch
Fri Jan 9 16:38:31 UTC 2004


I have a problem with diskless client, nfsroot booted (no initrd).

I have collected the (almost) minimal set of files one needs for diskless
boot from the existing Fedora Core 1 instalation (on Pentium IV),
and placed in /tftpboot/smallFedora.
The nfsroot capable kernel image is also in place.
The DHCP, TFTP, ... everything correctly setup.

When I boot a Celeron (Pentium IV class) machine everything is OK.
But, booting Pentium I (an old 133 MHz IBM) machine does not work.

What happens is on Pentium I machine is:
 - the kernel gets loaded, everything initialized up to the /sbin/init 
proccess startup.
 - /sbin/init gets loaded (I snooped on network), the neccessary 
"interpreter" /lib/ld-linux.so.2
   gets loaded, too (I snooped it on a network).

 - but init shows no signs of beeing alive.
 - the kernel is still running, scrolling (SHIFT-PgUp/PgDown) works, 
CTRL-ALT-DEL woorks, too.


I had the same/similar problem (and never solved) before.
Based on the same principle I had a RedHat 6.1 booting, 7.1 did not 
work, 7.2 did not work,
7.3 worked, 8.0 did not, 9.0 did not. And all of them came to the point 
of starting /sbin/init.

What could it be?

My assumption was that problem lies in ld-linux.so.2 (link to 
ld-2.3.2.so) from
glibc-2.3.2*.rpm package, or maybe /sbin/init from SysVinit*.rpm package.
I have tried replacing those with newer versions - it did not help.

Can anyone help?






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