On 12/18/2012 12:25 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
On Dec 18, 2012, at 11:27 AM, Josh Dersch wrote:
Is it actually possible to netboot from something
other than another 'bolix machine? I know there are a couple of experimental Chaosnet
implementations out there but I've never played with one of these. (Also, I was under
the impression that netbooting still required a local disk to store the FEP files &
netboot world).
I'm not sure. Right now, I'm trying to familiarize myself
with it. That could be true.
My biggest thing right now is to get the "site" configuration done and get this
on my home network.
Anyone have a simple "cookbook" set of instructions to get started with? Right
now I'm trying to figure
out how to dig out the ethernet MAC address so I can add it to my DHCP configuration.
I can point you in the right direction. This is all from memory (it's
been awhile since I've done this) so this may not be 100% accurate but
it should get you started. I'm not sure how to get the MAC address
(I've always just looked at my router's recently-used MAC list and
worked it out from there) but I'm sure someone else here can help out...
One thing to keep in mind is that the Document Examiner (Select-D) is
your best friend. All the documentation is available there and it's
pretty easy to search (use the "Select Candidates" command).
1) Make sure you have the IP/TCP System loaded into your Genera World if
it hasn't already been. The documentation is available in the Document
Examiner, you might also read through
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/symbolics/software/genera_8/Symbolic….
I'm making the assumption that the actual software is already present
on the disk (if not it may be a bit more difficult). Loading the IP/TCP
system can be accomplished from a Lisp Listener with the command "Load
System Ip-tcp" and after this you can invoke
(tcp:initialize-internet-namespace) to set up the basic INTERNET
namespace in your Site's namespace.
At this point you will want to save the world (who doesn't?) using the
"Save World" command. Alternately, you might want to load the NFS
client and server Systems before doing this, just to get those taken
care of as well. "Save World" takes the running Lisp image (including
the systems you've just loaded) and writes it out to a World file on
your FEP partition. This can be done Incrementally (in which case the
new World file is sort of a diff of the current World) or you can save
the entire world in a new file; the latter takes a lot more disk space.
"Save World" will prompt you whether to update the FEP boot files
automatically -- do so. At this point log out, halt the machine, and
reboot.
2) Add Namespace objects for IP/TCP hosts on your network. This is also
covered in the aforementioned documentation, but in a nutshell, use the
command "Create Namespace Object <Host /hostname>/." This will invoke
the Namespace Editor which you can use to define attributes of the other
machines on your network (address, protocols they support, OS type,
etc.) You'll probably want to define the machine-type as "UNIX42" for
anything that's not another symbolics machine (unless you happen to have
some TOPS-20 machines on your network :)). You can describe what
services the machine supports (FTP, NFS, Telnet, etc). NFS
configuration is a whole different can of worms and can (in my
experience) be a bit annoying, mostly around authentication. I usually
give up and allow anonymous access from my Symbolics machines :).
When you're done with a new Host entry, be sure to save it by clicking
on the "Save Object" command.
The really cool thing about Genera's namespace system is that once you
have your hosts properly defined, file transfers (and other
connectivity) are done transparently from the user's perspective. That
is, if you had a host that exposed only FTP, and another host that
exposed only NFS, the command to copy a file from both of those hosts is
identical (Copy File UNIXHOST:/foo/bar/baz/thing.tar ...) and Genera
works out the transport to use underneath the covers.
That should be enough to get your machine on the network and talking to
other machines.
- Josh