(I can not see any way to change the behavior of DEFAULT tho..)

Is it possible to re-define “option root-path” in loader.conf? I want to make install-server with four versions of FreeBSD avail (6.3/7.0 i386/amd64) and I need different “root-path”s in this case. I can prepare menu in forth, but I don’t understand what variable should I set!

It seems, that “boot.nfsroot.path” is set but “common/dev_net.c” and “i386/libi386/pxe.c”, but it is never used again…

PXE will load common pxeboot (loader(8)), it will load common loader.conf and show menu. What’s next?

Thank you.

Actually I’m fetching it via tftp only, which means loader was recompiled
with the LOADER_TFTP_SUPPORT=YES flag enabled.

But there is some code in loader which will still try on NFS and
therefore cause some delays and sometimes unpredictable results.
So if you want to do pure TFTP only, it’s better to patch out some
sections in /usr/src/sys/boot/i386/libi386/pxe.c.

Then to have loader download the files properly via TFTP, some
prerequisites must be fulfilled.

1. A root disk image (e.g. a floppy disk image) must exist on the TFTP server-
As loader runs in real mode, the size of the kernel, any pre-loaded kernel modules
and the disk image (aka mfs root) must no exceed 16 Mbytes.
2. loader must be scripted to download kernel, modules and the mfs root image
to boot from.

So we may end up with a directory structure like this on the TFTP host:

/pxeboot.0
/boot
/boot/loader
/boot/device.hinst
/boot/boot0
/boot/boot1
/boot/boot2
/boot/loader.rc
/boot/i386/6.2-RELASE/* (kernel and modules)
/boot/i386/6.2-RELASE/mfsroot.gz

The script loader.rc might be looking like this:

[..]
\ load kernel and mfs root
\
set kernel=6.2-RELEASE
set module_path=/boot;/boot/kernel;/boot/i386/6.2-RELEASE
load kernel
load -t mfs_root mfsroot

\ initialize kernel environment
\
include /boot/device.hints
set vfs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/md0c
set console=vidconsole
unset boot.nfsroot.path
unset boot.nfsroot.server

\ boot kernel
\
echo booting …
boot
[..]

This is of course only an excerpt from the actual work.

I look forward to writing an article on the whole process, as
besides patching there’s also the possibility to implement a dynamic
boot loader with a menu system from FreeBSDs loader.

Maybe you want to check back on this at a later time.

If you’re going to bootstrap FreeBSD via PXE with
it’s root device located on an NFS server, you will
need to specify it’s location via a statement like this
in dhcpd.conf:

option root-path “serverip:/pxeroot”

So you’re virtually free to choose any directory on the
nfs host as long as it’s nfs exported.

https://www.zettaserve.com/default.asp?catid=21

After being very successful with debian + dhcp3 + tftpd-hpa + pxelinux I have been having a difficult time with FreeBSD pxeboot. No success!

Thanks for working on this.

I and my tftpserver are confused about pxeboot’s idea where root is, i think. My boot stops after identifying server, root, and gateway.

Where does pxeboot want /pxeroot to be on the tftpserver?