I have a problem using NFS root and was wondering if anyone could give me some ideas. I want to build a system for cloning disks via NFS. The system I have thus far works like this: Boot the node using a floppy disk. The kernel is configured with Auto IP Configuration and NFS root. The lilo line contains the appropriate append= line to identify the NFS root server and the IP configuration protocol. I have this working fine with an Intel EPRO 100 NIC. The problem I am hitting is that I would like to support the EPRO 1000/T Gigabit NIC. Intel supplies the source code for this driver so that it will compile as a module. There is evidently some discrepancy between the license Intel desires to use for this card and the requirements for the driver to compile directly into the kernel. I guess that I could theoretically configure an INITRD image to contain this driver. The problem is that once I do this, I am hosed when it comes to the NFS root mounting. I disassembled a RH 7.2 initrd image and found that it uses a small program called nash to load the modules. It appears that once it runs, it then mounts the real root directory. The problem is that it says in the man page that it doesn't support NFS. I looked over the source code for it, and I believe them. I also looked at the source code for the standard mount command and can see that adding NFS support to it would be non-trivial. One idea that I had would be to compile NFSROOT as a module and load it last. I looked at the source for it and it looks more tractable, but again I am not a real kernel wizard. Would this be feasible? Is there something I am missing? Is there another way that I can NFS ROOT systems that require the driver for the NIC to be loaded as a module? George Sexton MH Software, Inc. Voice: 303 438 9585 http://www.mhsoftware.com - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-net" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
