Booting over ShareFS

Hi, I’m trying to boot my machine via ShareFS on RISC OS 5.21. I am puzzled how can one do this as the network needs to be set up first but that’s within !InetSetup within !Boot is it not?

We used to boot RISC OS 3.1 machines over the network. With RISC OS 3.5 things got more complicated but it should still be possible. I know ROL made it possible to boot Select off of many FS’s inc CD ROM!

ShareFS can be used over the small subset of the TCP/IP stack that is in the rom and only needs some configuration values from CMOS.

It would be great if some one could document how you do it on RISC OS 3.5 onwards.
IIRC correctly on RISC OS 3.1 all you had to do is:
Not have ShareFS unplugged.
Click on the ‘Discs’ icon on the icon bar mount your desired drive: Menu→ Save Choice
and Configure default filling system as ShareFS
The IP address and netmask would be acorn default 1.X.y.y / 255.0.0.0

The IP address and netmask would be acorn default 10.X.y.y / 255.0.0.0

• conf. FreewayAutoAdress on
• conf. ShareBoot xxxxx
• conf. Filesystem share

On the shared disc the boot directory should be (re)named !Shareboot.

I have it almost working but the configuration doesn’t get read and can’t be written. Failed to open <PreDesk$Configure> for writing for example when I try to set the Screen configuration.

Have you shared the disc read-only by mistake?

Nope, the disc is read-write. I also have copied the working Boot directory from the client to the shared disc and renamed it. And even then the configuration doesn’t get read and can’t be written.

The configuration is written to and read from <Boot$Dir>.MchConfig.<Boot$Unique>. If not present the <Boot$Unique> directory is made by the client, but there already needs to be a directory MchConfig in !Shareboot.

The IP address and netmask would be acorn default 1.X.y.y / 255.0.0.0

IIRC thats correct in that the Acorn default is 1.×.y.z/255.0.0.0

The IP address and netmask would be acorn default 10.X.y.y / 255.0.0.0

and this one I think needs to be modified to
The IP address and netmask would be ROOL default 10.X.y.y / 255.0.0.0

As it says in the notes in CVS for version 0.36
“Changed auto assigned IP address to be a valid private one in
the 10.×.y.z range.
Version 0.36. Tagged as ‘Freeway-0_36’”

Hmmm, old version Freeway module attempting to talk to new version Freeway module…

Note:
10.0.0.0/8 is private addressing and 1.0.0.0/8 is real world addressing – allocated to the Pacific region I think. Not that it being a real world address stopped Cisco (illegally) stuffing it in as a default for various configurations.

Hmmm, old version Freeway module attempting to talk to new version Freeway module…

That is no problem, Freeway (Access+) can use any available ip adress.
The problem is to boot machines with old and new versions of the Freeway module via ShareFS from the same server. But maybe this can help: conf. Bootnet On and conf. FS 0.254 sets the ip adress to the old 1.0.128.×.