[Techtalk] booting a diskless client

[Rudy Zijlstra]

Maria McKinley wrote:
> Maria McKinley wrote:
>   
>> Hello there,
>>
>> I am trying to boot a machine over the network, and it gets as far as 
>> looking for /sbin/init, and then I get a kernel panic.
>>
>> I know that it is mounting the root directory, because if I eliminate 
>> the directory /sys, it complains that it cannot mount sys. I know that 
>> the file init exists in the root directory, and works with the server.
>>
>> nina:~# file /tftpboot/oscar/sbin/init
>> /tftpboot/oscar/sbin/init: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 
>> (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.8, stripped
>>
>> nina:~# ls -lh /tftpboot/oscar/sbin/init
>> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 37K 2008-09-29 13:32 /tftpboot/oscar/sbin/init
>> nina:~# ls -lh /sbin/init
>> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 37K 2008-08-12 07:20 /sbin/init
>> nina:~#
>>
>> I don't understand why it believes that /sbin/init isn't there!
>>
>> Any advice would be awesome.
>>
>> thanks,
>> maria
>>     
>
> Now I am really confused. I was curious, so tried truly making 
> /sbin/init not be there, and now the machine appears to get stuck trying 
> to mount root. The console is just full of trying to mount and server 
> not responding messages. Bloody hell, that makes no sense.
>
> But then the server logs say this:
>
> Sep 29 13:36:57 nina mountd[2616]: authenticated mount request from 
> 10.208.108.28:842 for /tftpboot/oscar (/tftpboot)
> Sep 29 13:36:58 nina mountd[2616]: authenticated mount request from 
> 10.208.108.28:849 for /tftpboot/oscar (/tftpboot)
> Sep 29 13:36:58 nina mountd[2616]: refused unmount request from 
> 10.208.108.28 for /root (/): not exported
>
> Which I think means that it is trying to unmount the root directory, but 
> calling it the wrong name. Or something. But I have no idea why, and 
> none of this makes a lick of sense to me. Blech.
>
> thanks,
> maria
>   

Hi Maria,

What is in the /etc/exports of the file server?

it looks like the relevant directories are not exported by the file server.

Cheers,

Rudy