Re: [minix3] Boot never progresses past dhcpd nonamed in VMware and VirtualBox

[Antoine LECA]

+12V a �crit :
> I've tried both 3.2.0 and 3.2.1 in VMware Workstation 8 and VirtualBox 4.2,
> and, following the instructions listed on the MINIX wiki, unless I choose
> manual network setup, the boot process always stalls at
>
>> Starting networking: dhcpd nonamed.
[...]
> PCnet-PCI II) and selected NAT. I've also tried bridged and the same
> situation occurs.

How is configured your upstream DHCP server?

I remember seeing this with a laptop, when it was disconnected and hence
there were no DHCP server in sight; if I understand correctly, MINIX
dhcp client is a bit picky about all the informations it needs to work;
and when it get no DNS server, or when the DNS server is unreachable, or
something similar, then at initialization it times out.

Unfortunately while I found a workaround at the time (which IIRC was
along the lines of adding %nameserver to dhcpd configuration), I do not
have it at hands presently (in fact I do not have any MINIX 3 box.)
Perhaps other people can elaborate on this.


Antoine

[Antoine LECA]

Antoine LECA wrote earlier:

> Unfortunately while I found a workaround at the time (which IIRC was
> along the lines of adding %nameserver to dhcpd configuration), I do not
> have it at hands presently (in fact I do not have any MINIX 3 box.)

Perhaps you can try to write into /etc/hosts (of the MINIX guest):

192.168.xxx.1 vmwarehost
192.168.xxx.128 minixguest

where .xxx. is the --random-- number between 0 and 255 that VMware
assigns to the NAT'd internal network "vmnet8"; and .128 is the first
allocated number of the internal VmWare DHCP server; please adjust for
your real case.

IIRC (bear with me: it was a long time ago and I do not have ways to
check right now) some key network components of MINIX tries to "guess"
the host name at start time, and without proper DNS answers they hung;
using /etc/hosts it got some answer at least.

Note I can very easily mix that with the (now obsolete and retied) ftpd
server, which also required to know the name of the MINIX host to behave
correctly.

Hope it helps,

Antoine

[Alex B.]

Try using AMD Lance driver in Virtual Box, let it do automatic configuration.  Sometimes it will stall if it's not given enough RAM too, also turn off the APIC support in VirtualBox, despite the listing on boot that it has support for it, it's not fully implemented for every chipset and scenario as of yet, since this isn't a production grade operating system as of yet, you should expect bumps and scratches like this.  Also give your video memory 64 MB if you can, recommend 128 MB if you have a card that can support it and if you load X-Windows (xorg).

The documentation is somewhat outdated, as I found out about 3 months ago when I came back to do development on the new 3.2.1.

On Monday, October 8, 2012 4:40:21 PM UTC-5, +12V wrote:

I've tried both 3.2.0 and 3.2.1 in VMware Workstation 8 and VirtualBox 4.2, and, following the instructions listed on the MINIX wiki, unless I choose manual network setup, the boot process always stalls at

Starting networking: dhcpd nonamed.

 The longest I've tried waiting is an hour.  If I choose manual setup, it's able to boot properly, but then I can't get the network working (e.g. trying to configure it using ifconfig).

Per the wiki I've always set the adapter to the appropriate type (e.g. PCnet-PCI II) and selected NAT.  I've also tried bridged and the same situation occurs.

If anyone knows of a way to work past this I would appreciate it.  I apologize if I haven't provided enough details.