Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 8601
bootnet doesn't work
Last modified: 2015-01-07 18:40:46 EST
I recently tried doing a network install of RH 6.1 using the bootnet image, and I was unable to do so. I tried writing the image to three different floppies, and booting them from three different floppy drives, but on every occasion, I achieved the same result: SYSLINUX loaded and displayed its signup screen, where I typed "text" to start a text based install (the graphics installer can't be used here as the system has no mouse support, nor any easy means of adding it). In response, the system started loading the initrd, but half way through it, it bombed out, reporting that it couldn't do so and inviting me to insert another disk and press any key to reboot. I have no direct means of determining this, but a comparison against booting with the boot.img image indicates that it gets about 40% of the way through the initrd before bombing out, judging by the number of dots printed. ANY help would be much appreciated...
Addendum to the above: This problem appears to be hardware specific. I have now used the very same image on all three of the above floppies, and a second machine was quite happy to both boot the floppy and complete the install. I've since tried swapping components between the two, and it appears that the problem is connected with the PC Chips motherboard in the first machine, as I can swap everything else (including the SIMMs) between the two machines without affecting the location. Can anybody suggest a reason for this apparently crazy behaviour?