PXE and newer FC5/FC6 kernel problems

[Chris Rouch]

On 1/21/07, Paul-Erik Törrönen <poltsi at 777-team.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-01-20 at 20:50 +0200, Paul-Erik Törrönen wrote:
> > I also set up a basic FC6-installation to be booted from the server,
> > but using that installation to boot the mediaplayer fails at a
> > separate error. It complains that
> > the /tftpboot/boot/mediaplayerfc6/root is not mountable, although I
> > can NFS-mount this fine from another workstation in the same local
> > network. Creating the FC6 setup on the server with the
> > system-config-netboot does not give any errors.
> >
> > Neither case gives off any errors in the server logs
> > (messages/dmesg/secure).
> >
> > I'm a bit stumped at this point so I would really appreciate if anyone
> > could give a hint where to look for next or whether I have missed
> > something obvious.
>
> Here is the specific error for the FC6 boot (manually written from
> screen):
>
> Mounting root filesystem: /tftpboot/boot/mediaboxfc6/root from: 192.168.1.1
> mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on 192.168.1.1:/tftpboot/boot/mediaboxfc6/root,
>        missing codepage or other error
>        In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
>        dmesg | tail or so
>
> ERROR! Failed to mount the root directory via NFS!
>        Possible reasons include...
>
> Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
>
> I've googled for the various lines of this error message, but have not
> found anything in relation to PXE/netboot which would be of any use.
>
> Looking with the tcpdump (with the options '-X -v -s 1500'), I can't see
> anything out of the ordinary, the address and path of the mount is given
> correctly (as in the error above).

I'm getting the same error, with a diskless install of fc6 setup by
system-config-netboot. But I don't see anything in the server log
indicating that a mount request is being made (or in the tcpdump
output), so I suspect there's a problem with the nfs client. When I
have more time I'm going to unpack the initrd.img and switch debugging
on in disklessrc to try and work out whats going wrong.

Chris