From GoFacts

more about OpenFirmware

Boot arguments for network boot

If you are booting a power machine from CD you can just enter the boot arguments, for example:

boot: linux vnc vncpassword=XXXXXX

The situation is different using network boot. There is no way to specify the boot arguments in the dhcpd.conf, Open Firmware only gets the boot file name and ignores everything else. To overcome this problem SUSE added the mkzimage_cmdline tool which can be used to hardcode boot arguments in the compressed network boot kernel. For all other distributions you need to go to the OpenFirmware prompt and supply arguments there.

• You will get OpenFirmware prompt if you press 8 at the start.

• Once there you need to issue ls command and determine the OpenFirmware path to the network device:

0 > ls 
000000c83378: /ibm,serial
000000c84100: /chosen
...
000000d191b8: /vdevice
000000d1bc48:   /vty@30000000
000000d1cb20:   /l-lan@30000002
...

• In our case the path to the first network card is /vdevice/l-lan@30000002

So now we can set an alias to this device:

0> devalias net /vdevice/l-lan@30000002 

• And issue a network boot command followed by arguments we would like to provide:

0> boot net vnc vncpassword=abc123

• If you want to get back to SMS menu;

0 > dev /packages/gui obe 

• Additional boot options for RedHat Linunx can be found here:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/ppc-multi-install-guide/ap-bootopts.html

If you are using bootp-server you may want to make a directed not broadcasted boot:

0> boot net:SERVERIP,,CLIENTIP,GW-IP ks=nfs:<server>:/<path>

See also HMC Commandline Reboot See [http://penguinppc.org/~hollis/linux/rs6k-netboot.shtml Netbooting IBM pSeries