How to NetBoot properly?

I'm trying to NetBoot a cube from an OpenStep 4.2 virtual machine in order to reinstall the OS.

There's several small "guides" on the forum on how to do it, but nothing particularly in-depth.

This  (http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=3048.msg16775#msg16775)is the main advice I've tried to follow...

So I set up a master NetInfo server as shown here (http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/NeXTStep/3.3/nsa/02_QuickStart.htmld/index.html#2set).
And set up NetBoot as shown here (http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/NeXTStep/3.3/nsa/13_NetBoot.htmld/index.html).

My setup is as follows:
• ThinkPad running OpenStep 4.2 in a VirtualBox VM, network adapter set to bridged on the ethernet port

• Cube running OpenStep 4.2, ethernet cable hooked up to ThinkPad

The NetInfo network seems to be running correctly. The cube gets its hostname and IP address from the VM master server, I can ping the VM from the cube and vice versa, telnet works between the two, I can import the exported VM directories on the cube.

All seems to be working fine, but when I attempt to NetBoot (powering on, getting into the ROM monitor, typing "ben" and pressing return) one of two things happen, neither of which is booting.

In case 1, the machine seems to hang on "ben". I can see the ethernet activity light on the ThinkPad flash occasionally but that stops after a while.

In case 2, the machine says "connecting via bootp..." (or something along those lines, I didn't take a picture when I got there...), and after a minute or so it says (timeout). While this is happening the ThinkPad ethernet activity light flashes a bit but stops after timeout.


I'm stumped. I don't know what to do or where to find information on how to do this properly.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!




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After some more investigation it seems that my OpenStep VM is intel only, not fat binary. I'm trying to re-install it as fat but can't seem to find the option. I've been searching this forum harder and have found that some people had issues installing it as multi-architecture, but also it appears to have been done eventually.

I guess the obvious thing is is it running bootpd on the master?  https://www.paullynch.org/NeXTSTEP/NeXTanswers/NetInfo/1987_NetworkStartup_1995Spring.rtf

You could also do DHCP services on Windows with BOOTP enabled.

Yeah, bootpd was running. I'm feeling like the bigger issue might be that the binaries aren't universal m68k/intel/hppa/sparc. Need to find a way to correct that...

Quote from: finkmac on May 27, 2019, 10:52:27 PMYeah, bootpd was running. I'm feeling like the bigger issue might be that the binaries aren't universal m68k/intel/hppa/sparc. Need to find a way to correct that...

Did you ever find a way to get multi-architecture hosted from your NeXT VM?