NFS install images can't be found

[Mauriat Miranda]

On 5/25/06, Frank Cox <theatre at sasktel.net> wrote:
> I was trying to update a machine from FC3 to FC5 yesterday.  In accord with my
> usual practice, I put the machine on my network, booted off of the network
> install CD, said that I want to use a NFS image and pointed the computer to my
> NFS server and the directory where the images are stored.
>
> And it told me that it can't find the images.
>
> I checked from other computers on my network and the images are in place and
> haven't changed, moved or done anything.  And I updated another machine using
> exactly the same procedure over the weekend, and did a new install last week on
> yet another one with no problem at all.
>
> I'm wondering if it can't find the network card or something -- which would be
> odd because when I did the original FC3 install on that box I used the same
> "read NFS image" procedure and it worked fine.  (Haven't installed off of CD's
> for some years now.)  If I really have to, I will burn a set of CD's and update
> the machine that way but I'd really prefer to avoid that.
>
> I tried rebooting and entering the information again a couple of times with the
> same result.  And was double-checking for typos, even though I have my network
> numbers memorized.
>
> Has anyone else seen this happen?

On the target machine, when you boot and get to the screen to point to
the NFS location, try getting to a shell prompt (cycle through the
CTRL-ALT-Function keys, I forget which one). Try pinging your NFS
server or trying to mount the exported NFS directory to a temporary
directory.

On the host machine with the NFS server, open a terminal and run:
# tail -f -n 20 /var/log/message
Do this before your target machine accesses the NFS location. If there
is a connection error it (may) show up here. This was the case for me
when I had made a mistake in the netmask for /etc/exports

-Mauriat