The scripts that come with most distributions are unsuitable to network booting. The first problem I encountered was with configuring the loopback device. I ended up configuring it right before mounting the /usr and /home nfs shares, in the same script. It reads like this:
echo "Attempting to configure local loopback ..." ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1 up echo "lo configured..."Leave the echoes in there. It didn't work for me when I left them out. Don't know why. Lo should be configured before the portmapper. Otherwise, you will get errors all over your screen (although the mounting works fine).
If you chose to touch /fastboot, you will have to find references to it in the startup/shutdown scripts and make sure it is not deleted.
find /etc -type f|xargs grep '{}' -e fastboot ';'
is your friend.
The bootpc client can be used to do any configuration the kernel missed. Just do
export `/sbin/bootpc`in a script and you can use all the configuration information from the bootp server. It is included in several environment variables (To find out their names, run bootpc). This is especially useful when using the ``ip=rom'' kernel parameter, because this allows you to obtain all the information that was lost in the process from the bootpserver.