Re: Question on the images in /miniroot

[<dross00%hotmail.com@localhost>]

So I got my TT and I've been attempting to boot NetBSD to get an install 
going.  Being an Atari newb, I'm having a tough time...

It seems I can trigger a boot off the floppy by holding Alt for a while 
during boot.  I haven't quite gotten this down to a science yet though --  
sometimes I end up booting to the HD regardless.

It looks like the various filesystem images in the 4.0 release /miniroot 
directory aren't bootable floppies.  Or at least I wasn't able to boot to 
them.

The furthest I got was being able to drop the boot kernel onto the hard 
drive and then using loadbsd.ttp to kick off a netbsd boot.  Unfortunately 
boot would hang immediately after the following line:
kbd0 at mainbus0

This would happen with both the BOOT and ATARITT kernels.

So then I decided to do a little digging in the archive and found that 
NetBSD 1.6 shipped with what really does appear to be a bootable floppy.  So 
I booted it up.  It's unclear to me if I'm just booting into TOS running out 
of ROM or if I'm really booting up the disk -- I just get a low res TOS 
desktop.  From there I can launch loadbsd with the "-b netbsd" command line. 
But unfortunately I just get dumped right back into TOS.  Same thing if I 
try dropping the files on the hard drive and executing them from there after 
booting into the TOS living on the hard drive.

I'm not sure where to go with this next...  I guess what would help me the 
most is if someone could describe a known-good way to boot NetBSD on a TT. 
As in -- which release and which files to grab.  This machine has 10mb ST 
RAM, 16mb TT RAM, and 1gb of disk.  No weird hardware is installed.  So I'm 
surprised it doesn't "just work."

David Ross
dross%pobox.com@localhost

--------------------------------------------------
From: <dross00%hotmail.com@localhost>
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 9:27 PM
To: <port-atari%netbsd.org@localhost>
Subject: Question on the images in /miniroot

> I'm going to be installing NetBSD on a TT030 a little later this week. 
> After reading through the install doc, I'm still unclear on the 
> differences between the three filesystem images (miniroot.fs, prepare.fs, 
> sysinst.fs).
>
> I'm guessing that I first boot off of miniroot.fs and then I'll be 
> prompted for the other two as necessary.  Is this correct?
>
> It's also unclear to me if the boot floppy supports the Riebl NIC so I can 
> install off the net, or if I'll need to go find a SCSI CD-ROM drive to 
> install from.
>
> Sure I could find out by experimentation but I'd just like to save a 
> little time.  =)
>
> David Ross
> dross%pobox.com@localhost