Re: writing cdhdtape to CD

["Michael L. Hitch" <mhitch%lightning.msu.montana.edu@localhost>]

On Tue, 2 Jun 2009, Ray Phillips wrote:

> I was just wanting to burn cdhdtape to a CD and boot from it because I hadn't 
> tried it before and because this document says it's possible:
>
>  ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.0/alpha/INSTALL.txt

  I think the cdhdtape image was used before the iso images were generally 
available, and I suspect that they haven't been tested in quite a while 
and the install documentation likely needs some updating depending upon 
whether the cdhdtape image is no longer valid or if it just needs some 
fixing.

> By the way, can you say which block size value should be used when copying 
> cdhdtape to a hard disk with dd?  This file:
>
>  ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.0/alpha/INSTALL.txt
>
> says to use bs=16k, whereas this one:
>
> ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.0/alpha/installation/diskimage/README.files
>
> says 18k.  Both values seem to work.

  The 18k size would make sense for copying to a floppy, but it shouldn't 
make any difference as long as it's a multiple of 512.  I usually pick 64k 
since that's the maximum size the NetBSD drivers can handle and it's 
usually the fastest for disks.

--
Michael L. Hitch                        mhitch%montana.edu@localhost
Computer Consultant
Information Technology Center
Montana State University        Bozeman, MT     USA