I am trying to boot my power pc in an diskless environment. I have used TFTP server to load my kernel image. I am having problems trying to mount the file system that is present on the same TFTP server(Path: /netboot). The boot loader that I am using is CFE(common firmware environment), where in I am passing the bootargs variable to network boot.
On the server side I have changed the /etc/dhcp.config file to have all the below parameters.

hardware ethernet , fixed-address 192.168.52.160 and
option root-path "/netboot";

I have also modified /etc/exports as

/netboot *(rw,sync,no_root_squash)

With this setup I am able to bring up the kernel but when it tries to mount the file system the error msg that I get is shown below


PCtrace init; eabuf=c00000003f980000
PCtrace channel 10, status ptr d000080090220250
rtc-ds1307 1-0068: setting the system clock to 2008-05-06 05:39:22 (1210052362)
IP-Config: Guessing netmask 255.255.255.0
IP-Config: Complete:
device=eth0, addr=192.192.168.52, mask=255.255.255.0, gw=255.255.255.255,
host=192.192.168.52, domain=, nis-domain=(none),
bootserver=255.255.255.255, rootserver=192.168.52.3, rootpath=
Looking up port of RPC 100003/2 on 192.168.52.3
eth0: Link is up at 10 Mbps, half duplex.
rpcbind: server 192.168.52.3 not responding, timed out
Root-NFS: Unable to get nfsd port number from server, using default
Looking up port of RPC 100005/1 on 192.168.52.3
rpcbind: server 192.168.52.3 not responding, timed out
Root-NFS: Unable to get mountd port number from server, using default
mount: server 63.210.60.128 not responding, timed out
Root-NFS: Server returned error -5 while mounting /netboot
VFS: Unable to mount root fs via NFS, trying floppy.
VFS: Cannot open root device "nfs" or unknown-block(2,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions:
0800 156290904 sda driver: sda
0801 19535008 sda1
0802 136753312 sda2

Can anyone please tell me why I am not able to mount the file system ?
If there are any other configurations necessary, please let me know.

I'm not sure, but it may have to do with one of the strange non-obvious things you have to do in order to get netbooting to work. Here's a how-to I wrote up when I figured out how to netboot: http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...ss_Workstation

My first guess is that your /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf needs a line at the top which specifies "next-server 192.168.52.3;"

Don't ask me why this line is needed. It supposedly has to do with some bug or something. All I know is that without it, it doesn't work.