[8723] in Athena Bugs
Netbooting a 3600
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Basch)
Fri Dec 6 22:42:19 1991
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 91 22:42:08 -0500
To: bugs@MIT.EDU
From: "Richard Basch" <basch@MIT.EDU>
One cannot netboot a 3600 using a ramdisk kernel from 7.3; it panics
with a machine check almost instantly. Trying to netboot a ramdisk
kernel compiled from 6.3 seems to work. The 7.3 kernel is approximately
70k larger than the one in 6.3.
Probably, the bug resides with "etftp".
Installation procedure attempted:
Build a TK70, as follows:
ultrixload
EOF
descriptor block
etftp exec header
media size: 10,000 blocks
VMB size: 55 (0x37) blocks
compressed flag: 0 (etftp not compressed)
VMB (version 13) - 55 blocks
etftp text/data
The version of etftp used was the 7.3 /tp/etftp binary, appropriately
cut up to be installed on the TK70, as described above.
As I said, trying to netboot the 7.3 ramdisk kernel failed, whereas
trying to netboot a 6.3 ramdisk kernel succeeded. The ramdisk contents
were the same (with the exception of the symbol table, /vmunix).
The machine check occurred prior to the autoconf stage.
-Richard
