MicroVax II

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Sat, 30 Jul 2016, Greg Stark wrote:

> The hardest part was getting mopd on Linux to serve up the NetBSD boot
> loader properly. The mopd for Linux didn't support ELF images and the
> NetBSD boot loader isn't in mopd format in more recent versions of
> NetBSD like it was in older versions. Now it's just ELF. But it's
> finally working. If you use NetBSD to serve mopd this isn't an issue.
> If you want to use Linux I can send you an mopd format copy of the
> boot loader.

 FWIW, I had to deal with a buggy DECstation REX firmware revision which 
crashes on an attempt to use TFTP for booting (plus FDDI network hardware 
such as DEFZA, etc. only supports MOP booting by design), so I have added 
ELF support to Linux `mopd' some 15 years ago, to be able to netboot Linux 
kernels with no hassle.  I guess it's the matter of finding the right 
patches then, and I'm sorry to hear you had issues despite that you 
shouldn't have.

 As I have figured out earlier this year only said ELF support patch as 
well as some other improvements were imported by Debian soon after I made 
them, and then the package maintainer broke them later on with another 
patch applied on top.  Obviously nobody noticed or cared to report the 
breakage and I wasn't aware myself as I have only ever used my own RPM 
packages which I have created in the first place and then built from 
sources on a RedHat system.

  Maciej