I N S T A L L A T I O N





IMPORTANT: BEFORE attempting to install and use the netboot package please
           read this whole text carefully! The most important word in the
           previous sentence is the word BEFORE...





Overview of the installation process
====================================


Due to it's nature this package requires at least two computer systems. One
acts as a server, and at least one other will be setup as a diskless client.
Therefore this installation guide is divided into four sections:

	1.) Compilation and installation of utility programs on the server
	2.) Create a netbootable image of the target operating system
	3.) Setup of the server
	4.) Setup of the client including building the bootrom

The server has to support TCP/IP and certain protocols based on this network
standard. Most likely this will be a Unix-type server. Though it's probably
possible to also use servers running OS/2 or Windows-NT, for example, all
server related programs in this package can currently only be compiled on
a Unix-type host. This requirement is independed of the operating system
which is later booted on the diskless client. Therefore even if you want
to boot MS-DOS on your client(s) you need at least one Unix-type computer
for program compilation and generation of all boot files. Lateron when all
necessary files are built you can use any server you want.

This package contains two main parts:

	1.) The bootrom source and binaries. This part gets installed on
	    the diskless client. All binaries except for utility programs
	    are already precompiled. There are no further user changeable
	    or adjustable options in the sources so you don't have to have
	    access to the 16 bit development tools in order to use the boot-
	    rom. You can just use the binaries provided.
	    In order for the bootrom to access the network card in your
	    diskless client you need a driver. Currently the bootrom only
	    supports so called packet drivers, which are normally used on
	    DOS systems to interface a network stack with the hardware.
	    With this package only the packet driver binaries are required,
	    so you don't need to recompile anything here as well. You can
	    find precompiled packet drivers for many popular network cards
	    on any SimTel FTP mirror (it's called Crynwr packet driver col-
	    lection), and for those of you without internet access some of
	    those packet driver binaries are included with this package.
	    Another good source for a packet driver for your network card
	    might be it's manufacturer. At least the well known manufacturers
	    (3Com and SMC for example) provide packet drivers for their
	    complete product line. Those manufacturer provided packet drivers
	    are usually faster and easier to install than those from the
	    Crynwr collection, and can sometimes determine the hardware
	    configuration at runtime, which the Crynwr drivers can't. You
	    can use .COM and .EXE type packet drivers.

	2.) A set of programs to generate netbootable images on the server.
	    These programs are called mknbi-<os>, where <os> identifies the
	    operating system which is lateron running on the diskless client.
	    Currently only Linux and DOS are supported.

There is another requirement which should not be left unnoted. Although you
can build a bootrom with slightly limited functionality which is less than
16kB in size, the usual size for a bootrom will be between 16kB and 32kB.
Therefore when you go shopping for a network card you should try to get
one which is able to support 32kB EPROM's. This is standard on almost all
cards from major manufacturers, but most cheap NE2000 are known to allow
only a maximum of 16kB. Also note that some network cards from 3Com and SMC
allow you to select ROM sizes of 32kB and more with their configuration
programs, but can physically support only 16kB!





Compilation and installation of utility programs on the server
==============================================================


This package uses GNU's autoconf to configure the compilation process
of the utility programs. You shouldn't have any problems to compile
these programs on most Unix-type system. They have been tested on these
systems with the generic C compilers:

		Linux 2.0.33 on x86 processor with glibc 2.0.1 (aka libc-6)
		SCO SysV 3.2 (ODT 5.0) on x86 processor with GNU make
		SunOS 5.5.1 (Solaris) on Sparc 10
		OSF/1 3.2 on alpha processor
		AIX 4.1 on PowerPC
		IRIX 5.3

Proceed as follows to compile the utility programs on your system:

	1.) Cd into the netboot directory and run ./configure. It's
	    a configuration script generated by autoconf and checks
	    for header files and system specific details. The mknbi
	    utility programs contain some Intel assembler modules which
	    lateron run on the diskless client. If you want to assemble
	    these modules you need as86 and ld86, which you can get for
	    free for Unix systems. However, there are preassembled files
	    available so you actually don't need these two programs.
	    configure checks for their existence and creates the Makefiles
	    accordingly.
	    For an explanation of the switches available to configure
	    just run it with the --help option. Some additional switches
	    are available:

		--disable-mknbi-linux
		--disable-mknbi-dos

	    Choose these options if you don't want to create any of the
	    corresponding mknbi utility programs. There is also another
	    configure option:

		--enable-bootrom

	    Use this option only if you want to recompile the bootrom
	    itself. If you want to use the precompiled binaries, you don't
	    need to specify this switch. See the file README.bootrom
	    about how to recompile the bootrom.

	2.) Check that all generated Makefiles and the config.h are correct
	    for your system.

	3.) Compile all programs with

		make clean
		make

	    This will compile all programs without those which you disabled
	    during the configuration stage. IMPORTANT NOTE: Some Makefiles
	    use ifdef, which not every make program understands. If you
	    get an error from make (usually in the form: "missing delimiter")
	    then get and install GNU make on your system! Especially System V
	    systems are known to have this deficiency.

	4.) If you want to permanently install the utility programs on
	    your server you can run

		make install

	    This will also install the corresponding man pages for later
	    reference. However, it's perfectly ok to skip this step and
	    run the mknbi program from their source directories. But please
	    note that they are just called "mknbi" within their source
	    directories. Therefore if you read further down to run mknbi-dos,
	    you have to use "./mknbi-dos/mknbi" instead if you didn't install
	    the programs using 'make install'. You should also be aware that
	    you will loose some functionality when you don't install the
	    utility programs permanently. It is therefore highly recommended
	    to permanently install everything!





Create a netbootable image of the target operating system
=========================================================


This step of the installation process depends on which operating you
want to boot on your diskless clients. Everything described in this
chapter does not depend on working on a Linux system. You can use any
Unix type system to create the netbootable images. Most utility programs
in this package offer a whole bunch of different runtime options, so
that there are many different ways to achieve the same thing. The
following descriptions explain how to work with the utilities using
command line parameters. However, all of them also offer the possibility
to use a database which holds all required information about client
systems. This is especially useful when maintaining a larger base of
diskless client systems. I recommend to first check out the installation
instructions below. Lateron, when you got familiar with using all tools,
read the netboot.config(5) man page, then read it again, then check the
example database (misc/netboot.config.sample in the original netboot
distribution) and then write your own system database.

Linux:	With Linux you have far too many options to list them all in
	this text. Please refer to the mknbi-linux man page for all
	details. I will only describe the most common ways to setup a
	diskless Linux client here.
	First you have to decide where the Linux client is going to
	mount it's root filesystem from. This can either be a directory
	on an NFS server or a ram disk. Setup your Linux kernel accordingly.
	To use a root filesystem on an NFS server you should include TCP/IP
	network support into the kernel together with support for NFS file-
	systems. You cannot load this NFS support using a module as it has
	to be available at bootup. Additionally you also have to select
	NFSROOT support during kernel configuration. However, you don't
	need BOOTP or RARP support. Accordingly if you want to use ramdisk
	support the filesystem type you are going to use on the ramdisk has
	to be permanently compiled into the kernel. Also initrd has to be
	included in that case.


	1.) Configuring for NFS root filesystem.

	Next copy your Linux kernel into the current directory and run
	mknbi-linux:

		mknbi-linux -d rom -i rom -k zImage -o bootImage

	This supposes that your kernel image is called zImage, and gives
	you a netbootable image named bootImage.


	2.) Configuring for root filesystem on ramdisk

	If you want to use a ramdisk as a root device you have to create
	a ramdisk image first. Probably the easiest way to setup such an
	image is to use a floppy, though you can also use the loopback
	device if you are working on a Linux host. First format the floppy
	and make a filesystem on it. Next copy all programs and files onto
	it which you want to have on the root filesystem of the diskless
	client lateron. You should then test your root floppy. To do this
	copy your kernel onto another floppy with dd and set it's root device
	to floppy using rdev:

		dd if=zImage of=/dev/fd0
		rdev /dev/fd0 /dev/fd0

	Now boot your diskless client using this boot disk. After the kernel
	started up, it will ask you to insert the root floppy and to press
	enter. Your root floppy will be mounted.
	If everything works as you intended, you can now create a netbootable
	image. Re-insert the root floppy into your server system (or whereever
	this netboot directory is located), and type:

		dd if=/dev/fd0 of=ramImage
		gzip -9 ramImage
		mknbi-linux -d ram -i rom -r ramImage.gz -k zImage -o bootImage

	Like above this will now give you a file bootImage with the netbootable
	Linux kernel image in it.


DOS:	To boot DOS on your diskless client you have to have MS-DOS Version
	5.0 or higher. Windows-95 has an internal DOS called version 7.0, so
	it should be no problem to use it as well. Older MS-DOS versions
	will definitely not work. OpenDOS from Caldera (which should be iden-
	tical with Novell-DOS) also works. I haven't had a chance to test
	any other DOS like DR-DOS or PTS-DOS. Give them a try, and tell me.
	FreeDOS, a free DOS clone, definitely does not work with netboot.

	First you have to create a directory which contains all the files
	the client will see on it's boot drive (either A: or C:). This
	can either be the root directory on a DOS floppy or any directory
	on the system on which you installed mknbi-dos. In the first case
	it has to be a floppy which contains a bootable DOS system, i.e.
	which has been created with

		format a: /s

	on a DOS system. If the directory resides on a UNIX system, you
	have to copy the two system files msdos.sys and io.sys, which are
	part of MS-DOS, into it by yourself. When using IBM-DOS or OpenDOS,
	these files are called ibmbio.com and ibmdos.com. To do this copying
	I recommend using mread of the MTools, which are freely available
	for almost every UNIX system (see your favorite GNU mirror for
	further information).

	After you created the directory or floppy which lateron becomes
	the clients boot drive, you should copy all other necessary files
	into it. This will probably include programs to setup a network
	environment on the client. When editing text files for the client
	please note that they usually have to be in DOS format with
	lines ending in Carriage-Return/Linefeed instead of just Linefeed
	as it is common on UNIX systems. If you start himem.sys from within
	config.sys you should be careful since newer versions of himem.sys
	(at least newer than 3.09) can destroy the ramdisk image in memory.
	If you have trouble starting DOS from the network but not from a
	boot diskette with the same setup, you should try to add the
	following switch to the himem.sys call:

		/testmem:off

	With OpenDOS, the himem.sys functionality is incorporated within
	emm386. However, this doesn't work with netboot. You still have to
	load both, himem.sys and emm386, for mknbi-dos to operate properly.
	The warning which will be printed by emm386 about himem.sys already
	being loaded can be safely ignored. This will eventually be corrected
	in future versions of netboot.

	When you are finished setting up the clients boot directory run
	mknbi-dos to create a netbootable image:

		mknbi-dos -r /dev/fd0 -o bootImage

	This assumes that you inserted the boot floppy into the fd0 drive
	of your UNIX system, and will create a file named bootImage. If you
	used a UNIX directory instead of a floppy disk, substitute /dev/fd0
	with the name of that directoy. mknbi-dos will automatically detect
	wether it is a directory, an ordinary file or a block device.

	By default mknbi-dos creates a netbootable image, which lateron
	mounts the ram disk as the A: drive on your client. If you want
	to mount the ram disk as C: instead, you should include the '-c'
	switch to the call of mknbi-dos.
	The difference between mounting the ram disk as a floppy (A:) or
	hard disk (C:) is, that with the floppy option the ram disk can
	be removed lateron, maybe after a network redirector has been
	loaded, which makes the ram disk obsolete. This is not possible
	with a virtual hard disk drive. On the other hand side, when using
	the ram disk as C: you can specify a different ramdisk size with
	the '-s' option. Please refer to the man page for mknbi-dos for
	further information.






Setup of the server
===================


Setup of the server depends on the kind of server you are using. There-
fore all further explanations in this chapter can only serve as a general
guide. You should consult your server's documentation as the final autho-
rity.

When the bootrom starts on the client it first tries to query a bootp
server for information like IP numbers and the name of the boot image
file. Such a bootp server program is usually called bootpd. Most sun
servers use a program called bootparamd instead. Note that you _cannot_
use bootparamd as a substitute for bootpd as both programs use different
protocols. Install a publicly available bootpd instead on your sun.
Next you should copy the bootImage file, which you have created in the
previous step above, into a publicly accessible directory (called /boot
for example). If you want to boot more than one diskless client you can
use the same bootImage file for every client. However, if you configured
for a ramdisk (with Linux or DOS) and the ramdisk image contains different
files or information for every client, you will obviously also need a
different bootImage file for each client.

Then you need to setup a boot description file for bootpd, which is
usually called /etc/bootptab. Alternatively you can also use a DHCP
server which supports BOOTP. Consult your server's documentation for
further information. However, the entries in this file will usually
look something like this for every diskless client:

client1:hd=/boot:vm=auto:ip=192.109.225.66:\
	:ht=ethernet:ha=004001417173:\
	:bf=bootImage-client1:rp=/boot/client1/root

'hd' specifies the home directory and 'bf' is the name of the bootImage file,
which you created in the previous step. Therefore the full pathname for
the bootImage file for the diskless system called "client1" will be

	/boot/bootImage-client1

with this sample entry. The 'ip' tag specifies the IP address of the client,
'ht' the type of the network the client is attached to, and 'ha' it's hard-
ware address. The 'vm=auto' tag tells bootpd to use the same vendor encoding
as the bootrom. If your diskless client is going to use it's root filesystem
via NFS you should also specify the directory on the server which gets mounted
lateron with the 'rp' tag. However, if your diskless client uses a ramdisk,
you can omit 'rp'. When you choose to use the standard bootrom with ANSI
display driver (see below for further information) you could also setup
a menu for letting the user select different boot image files. See the
additional file INSTALL.menu about how to use this feature. But I recommend
to first use the standard way of setting up the bootptab file as described
above. You can always add a user menu lateron.
Of course you should also remember to get bootpd or dhcpd running on the
server, either on bootup from /etc/rc or some similar mechanism, or from
inetd. Again, see your server's documentation about how to do this. Note
that after starting bootpd, it is usually required to send it a HUP signal
whenever you have changed /etc/bootptab.

The next step preformed by the bootrom after querying the bootp server is
to load in the boot image file specified by the 'hd' and 'bf' tags in
/etc/bootptab. To do this a protocol named tftp is used. Therefore you
will next have to setup a daemon process for this protocol on your server.
Such a daemon is usually called tftpd, and you should again remember to
get tftpd running, usually via inetd. Since the TFTP protocol is very
insecure access to the tftpd server is usually restricted, either within
tftpd itself, or with a TCP/IP wrapper like tcpd. tcpd for example uses
host access control tables which are stored in /etc/hosts.allow and
/etc/hosts.deny. See tftpd(8), tcpd(8) and hosts_access(5) as well as
your server's documentation for further information.

If you selected a ramdisk for the diskless client's root directory you are
now finished with the server setup. But if your client is going to use NFS
(either directly like with booting Linux, or by using programs included on
the ram disk) you should now setup everything which is necessary for moun-
ting an NFS directory on the server. This usually involves running several
programs: portmap, mountd, nfsd and optionally ugidd. portmap usually doesn't
require editing any configuration files. But for mountd and nfsd you need
to specify the permissions which allow the client to access the required
directories on the server. These permissions are usually set with a file
called /etc/exports. Typically it looks like this for our sample client:

#
#  Export directories for client1 (diskless workstation)
#
/boot/client1/root		client1(rw,link_absolute)
/boot/client1/usr		client1(rw,link_absolute)

If you use 'map-daemon' to map UID and GID numbers on the server you
should remember to also configure and run ugidd on the server. Please
consult your server's documentation for further information regarding
setup of NFS exports. You might also want to check out the portmap(8),
nfsd(8), mountd(8) and ugidd(8) man pages. Also remember that access
to any of these services might be restricted with tcpd on your server.

Another important step is to fill up the root directory for the disk-
less client. It has to contain all files necessary for the client to
startup and mount further directories via NFS (like a /usr filesystem
as specified in the /etc/exports example above). How to setup this
root directory is far beyond the scope of this documentation. Just one
hint: if your server is _not_ running Linux, you should be aware of
major/minor number assignments in the /boot/client1/root/dev directory.
For example, simply using mknod on an AIX server will eventually give
you wrong major/minor number when the directory is later exported to
a Linux diskless client. With some configurations AIX will add a certain
offset to all major numbers which makes them unusable for Linux. Refer
to your server's manuals for further information. You might also find
some useful hints in the file Documentation/nfsroot.txt in the Linux
source tree, if your diskless client is booting Linux. Also, the PROBLEMS
file in this package contains some useful hints when you run into any
major/minor number problems.






Setup of the client including building the bootrom
==================================================


Until now you only had to work on the server (with the exception of maybe
booting your diskless client from a diskette to check the correctness of
the root filesystem). As the last step we can now go on and setup the
diskless client itself.

The first step is to configure the network card in the diskless client. For
this refer to the manual which came with the network card. Some cards require
setting of jumpers. Others have setup programs which have to be run. After
configuring the network interface write down all necessary hardware parameters
like I/O addresses, memory addresses, interrupt line number or DMA channel
numbers, as you might need this information lateron in the configuration
process.

Next change into the netboot directory on your UNIX system (where this
documentation file is in) and type

	make bootrom

This will compile all necessary utility programs and then run the confi-
guration program. Alternatively, if you have installed netboot permanently
(which is again highly recommended), you can just type

	makerom

in any directory to start the configuration program. It will first ask
you which bootrom kernel you want to use (don't get this confused with
the Linux operating system kernel, which is something completely diffe-
rent). The minimal kernel is necessary for network cards which only allow
up to 16 kB ROM size, and kernel86 can be used to boot on 16-bit systems
(older than 386), for example for booting DOS. Unless you have any special
requirements you should choose the standard kernel. Then you have to specify
the network driver to use for your network card. You can either choose
one of the supplied drivers, or provide your own. If you want to provide
your own driver you have to give the full path name of the network driver
binary on your server, and also specify all necessary options to run it.
Don't specify any options here which switch the driver into windows mode
or which allow it to work for diskless systems. Those options are for
Novell network bootroms only, and are not necessary for this bootrom.
If you use one of the drivers in the list shown, the configuration
program will ask you about all necessary hardware information to run
the packet driver which you selected. This usually includes the I/O
address of the network card, it's interrupt number and a DMA channel
number. Note that only that information is requested which is really
necessary. You should have your network card information handy when
entering this information. Some network drivers are able to determine
hardware related information at runtime and therefore don't require
any further information.

If you did not select the minimal kernel, the configuration program
is next going to ask you wether you want to include some additional
drivers. First it lets you select the ANSI display driver. This will
allow you to draw nice menus on the screen with the standard bootrom
kernel. You can then select the packet driver debugging program. It's
an additional module to trace network problems and is usually not re-
quired. It shows you the first couple bytes of all packets (where
the UDP/IP headers are encoded) going through the packet driver
during boot time of the diskless client. Only select this debugging
module if you run into problems during the initial network boot process
of the bootrom _and_ you know how to decode the UDP/IP header infor-
mation. The configuration program will also ask you about any additional
modules you want to install into the bootrom. These modules have to
be standard DOS COM- or EXE-type programs, and can, for example, preset
the network card to a special state before the packet driver starts,
or setup a serial line to support booting over a PPP or SLIP connec-
tion (the Crynwr packet driver collection also contains a SLIP packet
driver which is not provided in this package). However note that the
total size of the resulting bootrom image can't be larger than 64kB.
Finally the configuration program will ask you what kind of output
file you want to create. Choose the protocol which your EPROM burner
understands. The most likely choice will be "raw binary" or "intel hex"
but better check your burner's manual first. If you don't want to burn
an EPROM, don't worry and choose anything, since the floppy boot image
always gets generated (see below). You probably don't want to create
a "flash" binary at this stage. See below for further information about
Flash-EPROM usage.

After you answered all questions the configuration program is creating
the bootrom according to your specifications. It first combines the
bootrom kernel with all selected modules, then compresses the resulting
file and adds the bootrom startup code. When the configuration program
has finished you will find two new files in the current directory:

	image.flo   - this file can be written onto a floppy using dd

and either one of

	image.rom   - raw binary image to be burned into an EPROM
	image.hex   - hex encoded image to be burned into an EPROM
	image.flash - ROM image to be used for remote programming of a FlashCard

At first you will probably _not_ need the file image.flash. See below for
further information about FlashCard.

You should now copy image.flo onto a floppy using

	dd if=image.flo of=/dev/fd0

and then boot your diskless client using this floppy. If you have setup
everything (including your network card) you will see the bootrom code
starting, querying the bootp server and loading the boot image file. When
everything works as required you can then go on and burn the file image.rom
or image.hex into an EPROM. Please consult the manual of your EPROM burner
how to do this. Insert the burned EPROM into the socket on your network
card and turn on the diskless system. You should now see the bootrom coming
up. If not, but the bootrom works when started from a floppy, your BIOS
might not be able to recognize the EPROM properly. In this case you might
want to use the romcheck program which allows you to inspect the ROM area
in your client. Refer to the file README.romcheck for further information.

Another way of getting the bootrom code into your client is using the
Flash-EPROM card (called FlashCard), for which you can find a schematic
and PCB layout in this package. You can use the raw binary image (image.rom)
directly to burn it into FlashCard, but it's much easier to use the special
flash image format (image.flash), which can be created by makerom. If you
have built a FlashCard and installed it into your client, proceed as follows:

	1.) Copy the file image.flash into a directory which is accessible
	    by TFTP on your server
	2.) Edit /etc/bootptab so that the client will load image.flash
	    instead of the normal boot image file. Usually, this means
	    changing the 'bf' setting in the client's bootptab entry. Re-
	    member to send a HUP signal to your bootpd process if it's
	    running permanently. Alternatively you can also set 'bf' to
	    a soft link, and let that link point either to the normal boot
	    image file, or image.flash in case of programming the FlashCard.
	    Then you just need to change the link, and not to edit bootptab.
	3.) Copy the file image.flo onto a bootable floppy as described
	    above
	4.) Boot your client using this floppy. This will start the bootrom
	    code on the floppy, which will then load the image.flash file
	    and program it's contents into the FlashCard. Once you initialized
	    the FlashCard like this you can skip step 3 for future bootrom
	    upgrades.
	5.) Restore the old 'bf' entry in your /etc/bootptab file on the
	    server or let the soft link point back to the original boot
	    image file. Again, remember to send a HUP signal to your per-
	    manently running bootpd (if applicable).




Appendix: Adding a menu
========

After you got the remote boot process running you might consider to
implement a boot menu. With such a menu you can let the user select
an operating system to boot, either from the network or from a local
storage media. You can even simplify updating a FlashCard to a new
bootrom version by using a menu option. Please refer to the file
README.menu for further information.




Appendix: Recompiling the bootrom
========

If you want to recompile the bootrom for some reason, checkout the file
README.bootrom for further information. However, you don't need to re-
compile the bootrom in order to just use it!