Nick2253
Wizard
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2014
- Messages
- 1,633
I do have a working system using TFTP and NFS on a FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE box using DHCP on that box. When I change two lines in dhcpd.conf on that box to point at my FreeNAS box for those two services, the process hangs. But it only hangs when booting from FreeBSD's pxeboot. there is no problem if I use pxelinux.
On the client side I am booting directly from the LAN so there is little scope for getting things wrong.
I'm wondering if the problem could be the result of a timing issue.... The client is a relatively old ThinkPad. The FreeNAS server is much faster than the FreeBSD server.
I have no idea what you're currently doing, what you've accomplished already, and what specifically is giving errors.
For starters, what does "booting directly from the LAN" even mean? Are you properly booting from the TFTP server or not? When you say "the process hangs", what process? Any errors? Are you not POSTing? Do you begin booting, but the boot process hangs?
Let's go through this one at a time:
- Have you been able to successfully boot using PXE?
- If you were able to successfully boot, what was your setup that let you boot? How were those services configured?
- If it's not working, what are any errors you are getting?
- If it's not working, have you confirmed that you can access the TFTP server, and that you are receiving an IP address from the new DHCP server?
I know this has been said before, but I'm going to repeat it, because I think you're you're thinking this is way more complicated than it needs to be:
PXE is only two services: DHCP and TFTP. No more, no less. You must add a simple config to the DHCP server to tell a PXE-compatible network card to look at the TFTP server and the PXE configuration file. On the TFTP server, you much have that PXE configuration file setup so that the PXE-compatible NIC knows what files to start booting.
Once you have TFTP set up, you're done with anything related to FreeNAS. However you set up the PXE configuration file is completely independent of your FreeNAS setup. That's up to you to decide what to boot/how to boot it; FreeNAS doesn't care. It just serves the files.