Server/client issues

[FAUCONNE at FRSIM51.BITNET]

Thanks so much to all of  you  (actually  many!)  who  answered  to  my
previous  question  concerning  the  installation   of   Common   Lisp.

The beginner  Sun  system  manager  strikes  again.  I  have  two  more
questions for you Sun wizards. I RTFM and I couldn't find the  answers.

I  have a Sparcstation I with a small disk booting as a diskless client
(for  now,  I'll  figure  out how to use the local disk later) on a Sun
4/110  with  a 330 Mb external SCSCI disk configured as an heterogenous
server  (sun4c  isn't exactly sun4, right ?). I'm running SunOS 4.0.3c.

The first question is: is there a way to have an unattended boot on the
client SparcStation ? I only managed to correctly boot  it  by  typing:

    ok boot le()vmunix -a

and  answering to the various questions regarding file systems (most of
the  time  hitting CR is enough but I have to specify "nfs" a couple of
times).  I  eventually  get  the  login  prompt  and  a `cat /etc/mtab'
confirms  that the filesystems have been mounted as expected. If I try:

    ok boot le()       (or if I leave the machine auto-boot)

the  machine  starts  to  boot  smoothly  (SunOS  banner  appears,  NFS
filesystems found OK) but at some point  in  the  boot  it  stops,  and
complains about a recalibrate failure on fd0. Not surprising. We  don't
have a floppy disk drive. It then asks for the root file system (either
fd%da or sd%da). I have to abort it. I  checked  that  /etc/bootparams,
/export/root/clientname/etc/fstab are correct (they all  refer  to  the
exported filesystems on the server) so why on earth  does  the  machine
try to set up a root filesystem on a local disk although it appears  to
find  them  remotely  during  the  early   stages   of   the   boot   ?

Here's another one. I installed SunLink DNI 6.0 on the server. It  runs OK
but now I want to have it running on the  client  SparcStation.  The DNI
installation guide states on some page that I  have  to  rebuild  a kernel
for the client machine by invoking dni_install. So far, so good.  The
problem is it only makes sense to me to  build  it  on  the  target
machine but I can't (first of all the /usr filesystem is mounted ro  on
the client machine!). Actually the sun_install script doesn't  seem  to
know anything about the sun4c architecture. I got really confused  when I
read on some other page of the installation guide that I should *not* run
dni_install for the client  nodes  (how  will  the  new  kernel  be
built?) but instead only dni_rc_inst. I'm stuck for now so  if  anybody
can help...

Sorry  to  use  up  the  network  bandwidth  with so naive questions. I
promise  that  when  I  become  a  Sun wizard I will help my fellow Sun
beginners :-)

    Regards -- Alain (VMS SysMgr lost in an Un*x world)
    <fauconne at frsim51.bitnet>