NetBSD 8.0_RC1 installation oddities

[Robert Nestor <rnestor%mac.com@localhost>]

Still playing with installation of NetBSD 8.0_RC1 (from 201806180740Z and earlier) and have noticed some strange oddities.

I’ve installed the basic system on a disk using both the original/traditional disk partition layout and on a disk with a GPT disk partition layout.

The /boot.cfg file is different between the two systems with respect to the “rndseed” file location.  On the traditional layout the file path is /etc/entropy-file which is also reflected in the /etc/rc.conf file.  On the GPT layout the file path is /var/db/entropy-file in both /boot.cfg and /etc/rc.conf.  Doubt this makes any difference, but it is an interesting anomoly.

However the real puzzling issue is when xdm is enabled and the system tries to bring up an xsm session.  On the traditional disk partition layout it just works and login is successful providing me with an xterm window.  On the GPT disk partition layout it doesn’t work and xsm comes up with the “fail-safe” window.  This problem was reported on a thread on netbsd-users under the title “Cannot login via xdm after fresh install” back in Sept 2017.  I’ve tried all the suggestions in that thread and nothing seems to resolve the problem.  I’ve also done a complete filesystem compare of the two installations and they are identical other than the entropy-file location.  Switching the entropy-file location on the GPT disk to match the traditional disk layout didn’t change anything (as expected).

Most of the times I login to the system with the traditional disk layout the xsm session startup just works, but every once and a while it fails with the “fail-safe” window.  Every time I login to the system with the GPT disk layout the xsm session fails.

Any clues here?