Booting Fedora on an old 7248

[Ingvar Hagelund]

I am the lucky(?) owner of an IBM RS6000 43P-133 aka the 7248 "Carolina" 
PReP workstation. They run Debian quite happily from a dist-upgraded 
woody install a few years ago if I boot them.
 
Now, a few days ago, I needed to do some testing on PPC, so I installed 
f9 on an old B50 that I had tossed in the attic. I installed cleanly out 
of the box. Inspired, I dug out one of the 7248s and tried to boot one 
of them with the f9 boot iso too. It didn't work, of course, as the 
bootloader on the CD is yaboot. In the "old days", the typical way to 
boot this boxes was by a floppy with the prep bootloader built on top of 
the kernel image. The Fedora installation kernel is some 4.5MB, and 
won't fit on a floppy.

So I thought about netbooting. According to the firmware info (nope, no 
OpenFirmware on this box), it is capable of doing a bootp/tftp boot. So 
I tried that. I set up tftpd and dhcpd on the B50, and put the netboot 
image in /var/lib/tftpboot. From another box on the network, I checked 
that tftp worked as expected. It did.

Looking at the logs, it seems that the 7248 gets an ip address, starts 
downloading the kernel by tftp, but then gives up after a few packages.

See below for dhcpd. conf and some logs for several retries. What am I 
doing wrong?

And yet another question: Does the installation kernel have the old prep 
bootloader added on top? If not, how can it boot the 7248 at all?

Ingvar


# dhcpd.conf
ddns-update-style none;
ignore client-updates;
allow bootp;
allow booting;

default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
  range 192.168.1.108 192.168.1.126;
}

host horten {
  filename "ppc32.img";
  server-name "192.168.1.55";
  hardware ethernet 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da;
  fixed-address 192.168.1.98;
}
#EOF

syslog dump:

Oct  6 21:13:41 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da via eth0
Oct  6 21:13:41 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.98 to horten 
(08:00:5a:f8:9b:da) via eth0
Oct  6 21:13:41 kvelde xinetd[1717]: START: tftp pid=2677 from=192.168.1.98
Oct  6 21:13:41 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da via eth0
Oct  6 21:13:41 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.98 to horten 
(08:00:5a:f8:9b:da) via eth0
Oct  6 21:18:01 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da via eth0
Oct  6 21:18:01 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.98 to horten 
(08:00:5a:f8:9b:da) via eth0
Oct  6 21:19:04 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da via eth0
Oct  6 21:19:04 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.98 to horten 
(08:00:5a:f8:9b:da) via eth0
Oct  6 21:19:26 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREQUEST from 08:00:5a:f8:9b:da via eth0
Oct  6 21:19:26 kvelde dhcpd: BOOTREPLY for 192.168.1.98 to horten 
(08:00:5a:f8:9b:da) via eth0
Oct  6 21:34:26 kvelde xinetd[1717]: EXIT: tftp status=0 pid=2677 
duration=1245(sec)


More or less matching tcpdump:

 IP 0.0.0.0.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps: BOOTP/DHCP, Request from 
08:00:5a:f8:9b:da, length 300
 IP 192.168.1.55.bootps > 192.168.1.98.bootpc: BOOTP/DHCP, Reply, length 300
 arp who-has 192.168.1.55 tell 192.168.1.98
 arp reply 192.168.1.55 is-at 00:04:ac:97:8c:91
 IP 192.168.1.98.9394 > 192.168.1.55.tftp:  18 RRQ "ppc32.img" octet
 IP 192.168.1.55.36209 > 192.168.1.98.9394: UDP, length 516
 IP 192.168.1.98.9394 > 192.168.1.55.36209: UDP, length 4
 IP 192.168.1.55.36209 > 192.168.1.98.9394: UDP, length 516
 IP 192.168.1.98.9394 > 192.168.1.55.36209: UDP, length 4
 IP 192.168.1.55.36209 > 192.168.1.98.9394: UDP, length 516
 IP 192.168.1.98.9394 > 192.168.1.55.36209: UDP, length 5
 IP 0.0.0.0.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps: BOOTP/DHCP, Request from 
08:00:5a:f8:9b:da, length 300
 IP 192.168.1.55.bootps > 192.168.1.98.bootpc: BOOTP/DHCP, Reply, length 300
 arp who-has 192.168.1.55 tell 192.168.1.98
 arp reply 192.168.1.55 is-at 00:04:ac:97:8c:91
 IP 192.168.1.98.22590 > 192.168.1.55.tftp:  18 RRQ "ppc32.img" octet
 IP 192.168.1.55.34725 > 192.168.1.98.22590: UDP, length 516
 IP 192.168.1.98.22590 > 192.168.1.55.34725: UDP, length 5
 IP 0.0.0.0.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps: BOOTP/DHCP, Request from 
08:00:5a:f8:9b:da, length 300
 IP 192.168.1.55.bootps > 192.168.1.98.bootpc: BOOTP/DHCP, Reply, length 300
 arp who-has 192.168.1.55 tell 192.168.1.98
 arp reply 192.168.1.55 is-at 00:04:ac:97:8c:91
 IP 192.168.1.98.22530 > 192.168.1.55.tftp:  18 RRQ "ppc32.img" octet
 IP 192.168.1.55.33150 > 192.168.1.98.22530: UDP, length 516
 IP 192.168.1.98.22530 > 192.168.1.55.33150: UDP, length 5