tftp / NFS Root - eth1?

[Ralph Siemsen]

Gareth Woolridge wrote:

> Im pretty sure when I asked it 6 months or more ago, the answer was a
> resounding yes, that these days I *should* be able to use the tulip
> 100Mbit interface for network booting??

Yes.  It does work with 2.3.3 firmware (and probaly earlier too).

> Unfortunately we dont have access to the old mailing lists anymore (unless
> they are available on teh mirrors??).

I don't think so, unfortunately...

> If I configure eth1 (tulip) within the nettrom, I dont seem to be able to
> tftp the kernel, whereas vie eth0 (winbond) everything etherboots as
> expected.

How exactly are you setting it up?  I believe you need to do:

setenv netconfig_eth0 disk   (to disable it)
setenv netconfig_eth1 dhcp

Keep in mind that the request will come from a different MAC address, in 
case your DHCP server is configured specifically for one address.

> The other issue-ette I came across, was that compiling up a new kernel
> with non modular tulip support, the 100 megabit interface becomes eth0 and
> the 10 meg eth1 once the kernel starts up...

That's a common problem.  You can solve it two ways: one is to manually 
insmod the modules in the order you want - the first device will become 
eth0, etc.

The second way is to put certain entries into /etc/modules.conf, I 
believe something like:

alias eth0 ne2k
alias eth1 tulip

> Basically, the harddrive is dying yet again, I dont want to retire the
> netwinder just yet, and as it only hosts my personal sites via DSL, there
> is no reason to need anything faster than 10Mbits for the outside world,
> but I could do with more performance for NFS!!

You could also look into using a CF-to-IDE adapter... replace the HDD 
with a suitably large flash (say 256MB, enough for webserving/firewall 
etc)...

-R