Re: Prepping to install: a digression

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Mon, 13 Jul 2015 16:06:14 +0000 (UTC)
    From:        christos%astron.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas)
    Message-ID:  <mo0nlm$6rl$1%ger.gmane.org@localhost>

  | Did the raid autoconfigure at this point? If it did, then you could boot -a
  | and enter raid0a for the root device.

Unfortunately, I don't think he can - he suffers the "keyboard doesn't work"
malady that has been reported by others (at that stage of the boot process).
That is, "boot -a" works fine, but he is unable to enter "raid0a" (or
anything else) when asked for the root device (etc).   This was tried as
a suggestion to overcome the following problem earlier.

  | Then you can try to to make raid autoconfigure root...

That he had previously as well, and it just resulted in a system that
couldn't run or boot any form of NetBSD (or at least, not any with raid
autoconfigure included in the kernel, which it is in just about everything)
and required use of another OS to clear the discs so he could start again.

  | What does raidctl -s raid0 say?

I don't think his problem currently is in any way related to the raid config
or what's on them (though there may still be some issue that needs fixing if
he can ever get it to boot).

The problem is how to correctly set up booting from a raid1 filesystem, which
is a topic I know nothing about, having never done that.

Someone who has, and understands how everything needs to be fudged to make it
all work and ideally, who understands the processes involved in getting
an i386/amd64 system booted should take a look at his setup, and figure out
what he did (or failed to do)which doesn't meet the (as I understand it)
fickle requirements to boot this way, and tell him what to correct.   It is
most likely something simple, like starting a filesystem at a particular magic
offset, or something.

I don't think (I am assuming, especially as this has been going on so long)
that it matters if the whole installation needs to start again from scratch...

kre