The solution was simple, but Tom Reu had to point it out
to us: We weren't running mountd on the RIS server.
We used nfssetup to set up the nfs daemons. You have to
tell nfssetup that you _will_ be exporting directories, but
you do not need to specify any to export, as the ris utility
has already taken care of the /etc/exports file.
Many thanks to Tom Reu for his insight, and thanks to
everyone for your time.
Original message follows:
<haniotak_at_ucnet.uch.gr> wrote:
> Hi. We are in the process of installing Digital Unix 4.0e
> on a DEC3000 M300X. This box (to be referred as box 1) has no
> CD_ROM or floppy, so we are doing it through the network. After
> succesfully updating the system firmware, we then proceeded to
> try and install the operating system.
>
> We set up one of our other boxes (box 2) as RIS server, mounted the
> Digital Unix CD-ROM, and set the RIS server to share the software
> and registered box 1 as client. So far so good.
> We then attempted to boot box 1 from the network. Box 1 issues bootp
> request, then happily finds something to download. Apparently starts
> running genvmunix, but suddenly halts with this message:
>
> vfs_mount_root :cannot mount root
> Syncing disks...done
>
> DUMP: No pirimary swap, no explicit dump_dev
> Nowhere to put header, giving up.
>
> Going through the troubleshooting list on the docs, we made sure that
> no other RIS servers are in our network with that registered client,
> and that the Digital UNIX Cd is mounted locally on Box 2.
--
Vangelis Haniotakis
University of Crete - UCnet
Centre of Communications and Networking
System and Network Administration
Received on Wed Jun 23 1999 - 06:42:12 NZST