Re: NetBSD 7.02 on APU2 PcEngines

[Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Fri, 9 Dec 2016, 76nemo76%gmx.ch@localhost wrote:
>      Finally I have switched between the speed of 9600bps and 115200bps 
> to install NetBSD 7.02 on APU2 from PCEngines.

Hi, Alan, I also have one of these little systems from PCEngines. I've 
been following your thread. It's been a few years since I've messed around 
with my little 500Mhz AMD-based PCEngines board, but I think my method to 
solve the issue you are having was to hard set the console and baud rate 
in a custom kernel.

From the GENERIC conf file:
#options        CONSDEVNAME="\"com\"",CONADDR=0x2f8,CONSPEED=57600

If you uncomment that line and nail the baud rate, then use that kernel 
you should be good to go.

> This is uncomfortable but it works. What doesn't work however is the 
> installation itself. The kernel boots for a while and stops on root 
> device.

Can you do the install on another machine, install the custom kernel, then 
swap-a-roo the drive back to the PCengines host?

> I can type what I want (wm0, wm1 etc.) but the installation hangs 
> (sometimes after a curious message about NFS mount).

If you could post how far it got and what you see, that'd help.

> Any ideas? Do you think that an network boot and install will solve 
> these problems?

Why would netbooting help. I'm curious why that idea occurs to you? I 
thought the issue was the baud rate on the serial port ? I guess you could 
use a custom boot kernel via PXE/TFTP/BOOTP etc.. That might work/help.

> I have tried to boot from an USB2 CDROM and booting the ISO image from 
> syslinux system but this change nothing.

Are you passing any custom boot parameters? Can you summarize the specific 
issue you are having? I can try to help, since I have one of these 
machines myself and have used it for all kinds of BSD projects.

-Swift