The client being the Dachstein LRP machine
Provision for a bootrom - either an existing programmable chip or a socket
A working driver in the etherboot data base
Having selected the cards to use, check for a valid driver in the Etherboot or Rom-o-matic databases.
If you're lucky the driver will be obvious and you can either fetch and compile the source or use Rom-o-matic which will save you getting into compilation issues if using RedHat.
If the card driver is not obvious then do some further research as the driver could well be there but disguised as something else. See Section 7.1 for an example
Having selected the driver, the option to download the rom as a floppy image is the best way to start as the process can be debugged first.
Obvious .. yes .. Simple .. No.. Well .. In truth it is simple but it sure had me confused for a bit, but it was late and the coffee was weak ;-)
I initially used two 3com 3c509s, I set them up correctly with the DOS configuration program and inserted the eprom into the configured card.
On start up the machine was assigned an address via the DHCPD (Section 3.1) server and then magically booted from the tftp (Section 3.2) server, but all from the "wrong" interface. It turns out that I had put the Eprom in eth1 ( the last card to boot up ) but all communication is via eth0 and no matter where the rom is, it will work. While the hardware adjusted for my error, my reasoning lagged a bit, so make good use of those post-it notes, in other words - label them.
It is probably mentioned in the documentation somewhere and someday I will read it all properly :-) but if you want to avoid confusing yourself then be aware of that trap.
Knowing that bootup is via eth0 ( the first configured card in the boot up sequence ) we need to confirm which one it is. You can just note the MAC address from Etherboots start up display (eth0) or install Dachstein by the floppy method
If you choose to install Dachstein at this point, after configuring the all cards use dmesg or grep the appropriate log file ( /var/log/messages ). Then make sure that you know eth0 from eth1. With this information an important change will also need to be made to the network.conf file. If the extracdach.pl script is used then this will be done for you.
Dachstein is configured to assign eth0 to the external network and eth1 for the internal. From the above notes we realize that for etherboot this needs reversing. The extractdach.pl script will reverse these fields within the /etc/network.conf file. If for some reason the conversion script breaks, or it all works until you attach to the modem, then check and make sure the above changes have been done correctly. We want to be listening on the correct interface otherwise we will never find our internal DHCPD nor TFTP server.