README -- rbootd under Linux
============================
     -- Peter Maydell (pmaydell@chiark.greenend.org.uk), 08/1998
     -- Helge Deller (deller@gmx.de), 07/2020

rbootd is a Remote Boot Daemon. Specifically, it is used to
bootstrap some flavours of Hewlett Packard unix machines. You
probably won't have installed this package unless you have some
idea what you want to do with it, but I'll summarise the ideas here.
This document isn't intended to be a complete guide to configuring
your Linux box as a server for your HP; it just addresses some
Linux-specific issues, and particularly those concerning rbootd.
For more general information on what you're supposed to be doing, see
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/index.html which
is some very good documentation on the whole process of getting an HP
to boot NetBSD for a number of possible server OSes.  I'll also mention
http://www.netbsd.org/ for completeness -- this will have links to general
documentation on booting NetBSD/hp300 and also links to the nearest
mirror site (which will have the boot images you require to use rbootd).


The process of booting one of these workstations has several stages,
of which rbootd is the first. It is used to download a fairly simple
bootloader to the HP. What happens then depends entirely on the second
stage boot loader, but the NetBSD one (which is the only one I have
any familiarity with) will then proceed to boot in a similar way to Sun 
workstations, using RARP, bootparams and NFS mounting a root filesystem.

The Debian package isn't supplied with any boot images, because I
consider these to be an integral part of the HP OS you're trying to
boot (the HPUX ones will be non-free, for example). Also, for practical
reasons, including the NetBSD bootblock would make the Debian source
package enormous because the bootblock sources are intertwined with
the NetBSD kernel source tree... At this point I'll assume you've
obtained a boot image file from somewhere. It will probably be 
named something like SYS_INST or SYS_UBOOT. Put it in /var/lib/rbootd
(this directory should have been created for you when the package
was installed).

Now you need to add a suitable line or lines to /etc/rbootd.conf
to describe the machine you're trying to boot. The config file
format is described in rbootd(8), but here it is for easy reference:
     #
     # ethernet addr     boot file(s)        comments
     #
     08:00:09:0:66:ad    SYSHPBSD            # snake (4.3BSD)
     08:00:09:0:59:5b                        # vandy (anything)
     8::9:1:C6:75        SYSHPBSD,SYSHPUX    # jaguar (either)

If you don't know the ethernet (MAC) address of the client, it should
be displayed to the console at boot up, or you can just put something
random in that column for now and look in the logfiles: rbootd logs
the MAC address of clients who requested a boot but were denied.

If the network your HP is on is not on the Linux server's eth0 
ethernet interface, you'll need to change the line "IFACE=eth0"
in the /etc/init.d/rbootd script. 
Not being able to specify the interface in the config file is a 
deficiency I'm aware of, and will fix when I get around to it :->

Finally you need to restart the daemon: as root run
/etc/init.d/rbootd restart

Hopefully now if you try to boot your HP the Linux box will respond
to the rbootd request.

For more information on what to do next and on the NetBSD booting 
process in general, please read the Diskless NetBSD HOW-TO, which
can be found at:
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/index.html
This documents the whole process of setting up a diskless NetBSD
box, including hp300-specific information and information about using 
a Linux box as the server.
Note that bootparamd and nfsd are both in the Debian netstd package,
and rarp is in netbase so all you need to do there is install those
packages if you don't have them and configure them for your setup.


The following PA-RISC models should boot via rboot protocol:
- 705
- 710
- 715/33, 715/50, 715/75
- 720
- 725/50, 725/75
- 730
- 735/99, 735/124
- 745i
- 747i
- 750
- 755/99, 755/125

Newer Series 700 workstations use instead bootp and tftp to boot:
- 712
- 715/64, 715/80, 715/100, 715/100XC
- 725/64, 725/100
- newer models, such as the B, C, and J class systems
