RE: Insights from successful, yet painful, install attempt.

[Carlos Milán Figueredo <cmilanf%hispamsx.org@localhost>]

Hi Roc, nice to meet you!

From: port-amiga-owner%NetBSD.org@localhost <port-amiga-owner%NetBSD.org@localhost> On Behalf Of
Roc Vallès
Sent: lunes, 4 de octubre de 2021 0:51
> *** hardware
> - Amiga 1200.
> - Blizzard 1230mkIV with 68030@50MHz, 68882@50MHz, 64MB RAM.
> - ~120GB 2.5 HDD.
> - 3Com 3c589 PCMCIA NIC.
> - Null-modem (RX<>TX / GND--GND) cable, attached to another computer running
> tio.

Nice setup!

> But I had to discard most of them, because they require the netbsd partition
> to be below the 4GB point in the disk.

The installation manual state the convenience of the root partition being in the 32 bit boundary, < 4GB due to kickstart limitations. However, the only several months old kickstart 3.2 removes this limitation. Anyway, I kept my NetBSD partitions below this 4 GB limit to avoid compatibility issues. I usually boot the OS with the runbootblock utility; for some reason OS 3.2 and booting from early startup menu doesn't play nice.

> The result of this work is here, including a binary:
> https://github.com/rvalles/netbsd_amiga_loadbsd_pleasebuild

Thanks for sharing! It is very appreciated!

> As it turns out, the xstreamtodev tool, also found at installation/misc/,
> does not support disk offsets above 4GB

Indeed that's dangerous, thanks for pointing out. I have been many times to near wiping my hard disk.

> I couldn't find any dd-like tools for AmigaOS, which suggests I should try
> and implement some level of support for doing this on my pyamigadebug
> (library behind AmigaXfer) in the future.

There is one [1], but it targets the whole disk and not a specific partition, that is problematic.

> This is a script that installs netbsd, very different from the installer
> found in some other architectures. I do not know why Amiga port uses a
> separate script (although I'm curious).

So Amiga installation doesn't use sysinst? If it is a simple script, where could I find the source? The script does something useful: list the RDB partition table with NetBSD mapped device file, so you can chose the correct name for installation. I have not found any way to print this information after the install, that is quite annoying and dangerous if you intend to use dd.

I asked a question on this list, but without definitive answer so far. Taking a look on how the scripts does this would help.

Apart from that, I felt your very same pains with the installation, like the lack of dhcp support. I ended up installing the system from WinUAE, by emulating a SCSI controller and a CD-ROM; then I took the CF card back to the real Amiga.

> It is possible to install the Netbsd Amiga port. It is far from a smooth
> experience, including data-destroying bear traps, and requires an unrealistic
> amount of expertise and patience. A bunch of flaws have been highlighted
> above, along with specific suggestions on how to possibly tackle some of
> them, in order to make the install experience less painful.

Thanks for sharing your experience! I feel less lonely now 😊 There is an interesting blog post about experience and tips installing NetBSD 9.1 in a Commodore Amiga here [2]. It mentions some of the current challenges, like the ptys, the lack of X11 support for native chipset and the makemandb one.

Regards,
Carlos

[1] https://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/dd 
[2] http://www.jeacle.ie/pub/articles/netbsd/#dec2020 

Carlos Milán Figueredo | HispaMSX System Operator | http://www.hispamsx.org | telnet://bbs.hispamsx.org | https://calnus.com