booting problem, diskless over network

[Russ Poffenberger]

Recently I posted a problem regarding slow booting of a diskless client
over the network.

The most annoying problem was the second stage boot of vmunix that would
just hang apparently forever sometimes. I got several responses from some
people that had similar problems and also some suggestions. One suggestion
came from Sun engineering themselves. I replied to some of the people but
I realize that a post here might benefit a lot of people because it
appears to be a more widespread problem.

The first problem was the first stage boot of the boot program. This is
controlled by the prom in the booting machine. The Sun engineer relayed
that there are some problems with early PROM's and 2.8.3 versions should
fix that.  This problem isn't as annoying as the second stage since it
always completed eventually.

The second stage problem turned out to be an old version of the boot.sun3
program from pre-4.0.3 that didn't get upgraded by sunupgrade to 4.0.3.
Apparently, according to Sun, the boot program was significantly
re-written for 4.0.3 to correct several problems. Luckily I had another
server in our building that had 4.0.3 from a full install that I copied
and it works MUCH better.

Many thanks to all who responded and especially to Sun engineering for
providing the clues that led me to the solution.

Russ Poffenberger               DOMAIN: poffen at sj.ate.slb.com
Schlumberger Technologies       UUCP:   {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen
1601 Technology Drive		CIS:	72401,276
San Jose, Ca. 95110
(408)437-5254
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