Hi all Amiga Netizens,

At least for once, I might be able to contribute to the Amiga NetBSD 
community but I still need a bit of help ....

Since a few days, I am working on creating a set of floppies and
scripts that would allow automatic installation (well, you still have
to answer a few questions ;-)  ).

The general principle is:

     - Boot from floppy on which I replaced 'init' by a bourne shell script
     - New init will walk thru every (0-15) disk to find a valid swap
       partition.
     - You will be asked (for each 'b' partitions found) if it can be 
       used to load a miniroot. At the first positive answer, the loop will
       exit an we go further.
     - newfs the accepted 'b' partition and mount it 
     - Copy the boot floppy to there
     - Read the rest of the miniroot off floppy tar (multiple volumes, probably
       two in the final version)
       This contains all possible devices + a bunch of usefull commands such as
       various mount commands, dump, restore, rmt, fsck, etc ... and another
       /sbin/init to perform the second stage of installation.

     - Then see all the questions below !

     - Then run the new '/sbin/init' which came from the miniroot tar
       to perform the rest of the interactive installation. This as result
       of a reboot or by another way (see all the questions below !).

     - rebbot the newly (or update) NetBSD !!!

well here is my problem:

   I wanted then, to make the 'b' partition look as '/'. I have tried different
   solutions which all failed 

      remount /dev/sdxb on /   chokes with 'does not match mounted device'
      mount_null /xxx/bin /bin, etc ...   does not work
 
    The basic problem I encounter in all these case is the following:

        at boot, /dev/fd0a is on /
        then I mount /dev/sdxb on /mfs
        to untar miniroot, I have to take the diskette away and then tar from
        /dev/rfd0a (fd0a is busy).
        
        Then, I tell the user to make sure to put the boot diskette
        back in the drive and try 'mount -u -r /dev/fd0a /' in an attempt
        to resync with the floppy (all commands after the tar are taken
        from /mfs/... to avoid using the floppy)

        This always (and other trial I did) end up in a "I/O error" and
        most of the time trips to the kernel debugger.


    The questions I have are:

    1.  Would there be any way of reusing fd0a after having removed the floppy,
        used /dev/rfd0a for somethging else and then reinserted the floppy ?

    2.  If yes, what should I use to make my /mfs (/dev/sdxb to look as /);
        mount_null seemed a good idea ?

I would really like to avoid booting a second time if possible !

  
    3. If the above is not possible, I could just ask the user to use 'sdxb' 
       as the the boot device and halt the system but that is not accepted by
       the kernel (only 'sdx' allowed). 
       For this, I want to try the following trick in amiga/swapgeneric.c:

-----------

in setconf():  ( '|' on left for changes)
-------------

setconf()
{
        struct dkdevice *dkp;
        struct partition *pp;
        struct genericconf *gc;
        struct bdevsw *bdp;
|       int unit, swaponroot, rootonswap;
        char name[128];
        char *cp;

        swaponroot = 0;
|       rootonswap = 0;

        if (rootdev != NODEV)
                goto justdoswap;

        unit = 0;
        if (boothowto & RB_ASKNAME) {
                gc = getgenconf(name);
                cp = name + 2;
                while (*cp >= '0' && *cp <= '9')
                        unit = 10 * unit + *cp++ - '0';
                if (*cp == '*')
                        swaponroot = 1;
|               else if ( *cp >= 'a' && *cp <= 'p' )
|                       rootonswap = *cp - 'a';
                unit &= 0x7;
                goto found;
        } 


And a bit further:

found:   

        gc->gc_root = MAKEDISKDEV(major(gc->gc_root), unit, rootonswap);
        rootdev = gc->gc_root;


-----------

       This would allow trying to boot from ANY partition possible and permit
       to boot the miniroot I just created. Kernel gurus out there ? 
       Would that work?
       And if yes, should it integrated in the kernel as such ?


Oh, another note:

  I am going on vacation on the 21st of august for three weeks and the work
  load is such before leaving that I think I can have something ready before 
  end of september. I hope you do not mind waiting ???


Any help very much appreciated, please send Email directtly to me, I cant 
read the list due to work load, especially with ALL the duplicates !

Cu, Francis

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Francis Demierre          SMTP : francis@hasler.ascom.ch
Ascom Hasler AG,          UUCP: ...!mcsun!chsun!hslrswi!francis
Abt. NVEI2,               X.400: S=francis/O=ascom/P=eunet/A=arcom/C=ch
Belpstrasse 37,,          Tel. : +41 31 999 3503
CH-3000 Bern 14           Fax  : +41 31 999 3735
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


------------------------------------------------------------------------------