Re: Suitable host to (cross-)build NetBSD?

["Thomas Mueller" <mueller6724%bellsouth.net@localhost>]

I am now on a new Intel Sandy Bridge system. 

Motherboard is MSI Z68MA-ED55 (B3).  Features UEFI and USB 3.0.

CPU is Intel i7-2600K.

Internal hard drive is Western Digital Caviar Green 3 TB, SATA, looks good so 
far.

I also got a Western Digital My Book Essential 3 TB USB hard drive.

Plextor DVD/CD writer (PX-L890SA), SATA.

No floppy drive or headers on motherboard: good riddance, in view of the 
trouble I was having with old floppy disks.

I installed NetBSD 5.1_STABLE amd64 on a Kingston Data Traveler 16 GB (USB 
stick).  That booted but would go into instant reboot if I tried anything 
relating to X, like startx or even Xorg -configure .

I installed NetBSD-current on the internal hard drive, but it wouldn't boot.  
When I tried putting the root partition on a USB stick, closest I could get to 
booting was a login prompt, but then the system froze.  I was not able to 
successfully run passwd when booting from the installation CD.

I also had trouble with NetBSD 5.1_STABLE and -current on my old computer, 
i386: screenblanking problem that the NetBSD people seemed unable to fix.

So if there is to be any dark-horse chance of running NetBSD amd64 on the new 
computer, I would build from source and modify the GENERIC kernel configuration 
file.  I would study the appropriate sections in the NetBSD Guide and the 
command used in the NetBSD builds on nyftp.netbsd.org .  I guess I would 
install by unpacking the installation sets, possibly from FreeBSD, and then 
running MAKEDEV and etcupdate.  Sysinst maybe doesn't really need to support 
GPT as such, but it needs to be able to install on already-mounted partitions.

There would still be the problem of booting.  I would need to cross-compile a 
good Linux system and build the latest version of GRUB2, now at 1.99, be able 
to set the configuration.  I see FreeBSD ports collection has grub2 at v1.98; 
NetBSD pkgsrc has no grub2.  Maybe NetBSD won't boot with grub2?

Then there is the problem of how to access the GPT partitions, handled so much 
better in Linux and FreeBSD than in NetBSD.  MAKEDEV only goes up to dk7 and 
rdk7 in /dev.  Maybe I could go into /dev and ./MAKEDEV dk8 rdk8 dk9 rdk9 (and 
so on)? 

Now FreeBSD 9.0 BETA2 has just been released, but no announcement yet.  That 
should keep me busy and take the part of the disk where I now have the failed 
NetBSD installation (just delete and redo those partitions, nothing there worth 
saving).

Tom