[H-GEN] no external media, how to boot?

[Robert Brockway]

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On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, David Jericho wrote:

> This maybe a shot in the dark, but I have seen the same behaviour with
> Linux being a boot server for SGI machines. It's an incomplete IP
> stack that doesn't understand ip fragmentation, or the DF (don't
> fragment) flag. The DF flag may have been set on the return packets.

I've had problems with Linux acting as a tftp server for various other
OSes (xterminals, etc).  The problem arose with Linux kernel 2.2.  I
believe that they fixed something in the networking code which has
revealed a problem with other implementations of tftp.  Some have said
that playing with network parameters (buffer sizes, etc) has solved this
problem.

> To turn PMTU discovery off, use the below command on your boot server.

One would hope it would not come into play on a connection not passing
through any routers, but then... :)

> # sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_no_pmtu_disc=1
>
> I recommend you set it back to 0 once you have Debian installed on
> your device.

I've had to keep it at 0 on a few boxes because of remote network that
don't handle pmtu properly.  I've particularly found this a problem with
mail servers (smtp connections failing to particular sites until pmtu is
turned off).

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org, zzbrock at uqconnect.net
Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah

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