Re: [Etherboot-developers] Etherboot/GRUB driver for eepro100 -problem in understanding !

[Christoph Plattner]

Hallo Mr. OKUJI !

No, I don't blame GRUB, especially where the diskless stuff
comes from myself ....

I don't think, that it has to do with networking in any way.
The point is that GRUB always use the exactly same downloading
if booted diskless or local. The BOOTP/TFTP is working in both
modes and used in both test cases.

But booted diskless, the OS kernel crashes (I have to analyse
the consistence of the image loaded into memory !). Booted local,
but loading the kernel in the same way (using TFTP download from
the same server, which is also selected by BOOTP) the kernel boots.
This two cases are to 100% repeatable.

And then there is a test case with a 50:50% result. If I boot
GRUB from disk (local floppy without menu.lst), do the BOOTP and
`root (nd)' and load the menu with 
`configfile /tftpboot/plf/menu.lst' and boot menu controlled
(where in this case I have to add the lines `bootp' and `root (nd)'
to the config file, as this is not the default in local boot),
the kenrel boots sometimes, and sometime it crashes.

The kernel crashes means, that nothing else is printed as the
welcome message, then the machine reboots.

Now comming to your point. Is it possible to have correct
BOOTP communications and can I donwload successfully a config
file if the network card is not initialized correctly (in
connection with the use before in etherboot ?
Or is it possible that I only can receive single frames, but when
I receive a serie of frames, the NIC does not do the right thing.
Perhaps your are right. I have to study the bus master activity
of the NIC. Perhaps the chip uses addresses for data transfer
used before in etherboot, and writes something on wrong memory
locations. I have to check here some things.

Further I will try the boot process with another ISA base NIC.

Thanks,
        Christoph P.


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OKUJI Yoshinori wrote:
> 
> From: Christoph Plattner <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Etherboot-developers] Etherboot/GRUB driver for eepro100 - 
> problem  in understanding !
> Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 10:06:52 +0100
> 
> > If I don't use GRUB in the "diskless" mode, and load the
> > kernel plus modules manually per tftp, the kernel works.
> 
> Then, perhaps your Etherboot program doesn't clean up the status of
> the network card properly, before it executes GRUB. Because in GRUB,
> the difference between diskless booting and network booting is only
> their formats (not essential), I don't think GRUB should be blamed
> here. Which version of Etherboot do you use?
> 
> Okuji
> 
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