[finnix] netbooting finnix eth0 problem

[Ronald Zijlstra]

Hello,

i have been using Finnix for a while now as a base for our 
'linuxbootcd', which we use to install (partimage) images onto 
Windows-based PC's. We added a GUI and some other tools and scripts. The 
scripts chroot, stage1 and stage2 are very handy to keep the distro 
up-to-date.

But i have run into a problem. According to the forum, Finnix should be 
able to 'netboot'  with tftp, nfs and pxelinux. I've been trying and all 
is setup, but at a certain point de initrd drops me to a shell, because 
it cannot find eth0.

the nfs settings are passed to the kernel (append initrd=finnix/minirt 
nfsroot=10.0.0.1:/tftpboot/finnix nfsif=eth0 nfsvers=2 nfsip=10.0.0.10 
nfsnetmask=255.255.255.0 ) and i believe this should work when a NIC is 
detected.

I guess the kernel modules for network adapters are not available in the 
minirt/initrd. I've been trying to add them manually but still there is 
no eth0 detected (on different machines). Could someone help me out, do 
i need to use udev? or maybe force insmod all possible LAN kernel 
modules to load? Should i build a custom kernel with all NIC drivers 
built in?

all help would be appriciated,

best regards,

Ronald Zijlstra
Burgum, Netherlands
ronald at okepc.nl