Pegasos

Netbooting

The Open Desktop Workstations (ODWs) use SmartFirmware. The SmartFirmware user manual has a good netbooting tutorial. The DHCP support in the firmware is slightly buggy and requires inserting a client and server IP of 0.0.0.0 in the boot-device string, like so:

setenv boot-device eth:dhcp,0.0.0.0,,0.0.0.0

(The double comma indicates an empty boot file name--it is supplised by the DHCP server.) eth is an alias for the 100Mbit ethernet device and geth is an alias for the Gigabit device. Now to boot, simply type boot and hit return. The red cables are hooked up to the 100baseT interfaces, and the yellow ones are hooked up to the 1000baseT interfaces.

This can be saved in the firmware by editing the nvramrc script. To begin editing, type nvedit and add the above command to the end of the list (change 'eth' to the devalias of whatever ethernet device you wish to use). When finished, hit control-C to exit the editor. Then, type nvstore to save your changes.

nvedit commands:

• control-e - end of line
• control-n - next line
• control-f - forward
• control-b - back
• control-c - exit