On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 08:32:51PM -0800, Stephen Young wrote:

> Looks like my options are to get parts together to get a workstation 
> with a burner and install the i386 version and prepare the sparc64 iso 
> and burn it.  Or find a way to get the harddisk itself set up with a 
> kernel and some drivers so I can access the cdrom and finish the 
> installation or something.
> 
> I have searched the docs, and faqs on netbsd.org and did google 
> searches and could not locate information that helps me much in my 
> situation.
> 
> Any of you veterans have ideas of how I can go about solving this ?

Well, assuming you cannot get the CDROM working properly, you have
several choices:

1) netboot.  There should be lots of documentation on that
including manpages on the web site.

2) You should be able to cross compile the entire distribution
w/o needing to install NetBSD.

3) You can populate the disk from an i386, but you need to
keep in mind the disklabel and filesystem endianness isssues.
I don't recommend this method.

4) You should be able to boot from a Solaris CDROM, and use
that to label, newfs, untar, and installboot by hand with
the standard set of Solaris utilities.  There are minor
filesystem differences, so fsck will complain the first 
time you run it.  Here are the steps:

a) Get into the single-user shell

b) use format to label the disk

c) use newfs to create a filesystem

d) set up networking and copy over the sets

e) untar them

f) copy the kernel and ofwboot to the root dir

g) create a /dev and MAKEDEV (hope this still works)

h) use installboot to install the bootblk.  (The Solaris
bootblock should also work, but it requires the solaris
ufsboot.  ufsboot may be able to boot the kernel directly
or may require ofwboot, depending on the platform.)

(You can also mess w/rc.conf now if you want.)

i) create an fstab so you can mount things when you reboot

j) reboot


5) Use the miniroot.  Follow steps a-c above then extract
the miniroot filesystem onto the swap partition and reboot
with `-a'.  When asked for the partition enter `*'.

6) Install Solaris on one partition.   Then do the above to
install NetBSD on another.

7) Use steps a-c, then copy the ramdisk kernel onto the root
partition and boot it.

I think I've used most of these options at various times.

Eduardo