Re: Question on the images in /miniroot

[<dross00%hotmail.com@localhost>]

Continuing the story on my TT030 install...

I was not able to get 2.1 installed, but going back to 1.6.1 I was able to 
get an install booting up off the drive.

There are two partitioning options for installing from sysinst -- either let 
NetBSD take over the entire disk or go with a AHDI partitioning scheme.  On 
either 1.6.1 or 2.1 I was not able to select the option to use the entire 
disk without encountering a critical error that would halt the install.  (I 
can go back and fetch more info on this if anyone is interested.)

So on my 1 gb boot disk I went with an AHDI partitioning scheme with three 
partitions: 50 mb "BGM" (handy for storing kernel images bootable from TOS), 
811 mb NBD, and 150 mb SWP.  With 2.1 I was able to go through the full 
install, but after the system rebooted, the secondary bootloader couldn't 
find the tertiary bootloader.  Going back to 1.6.1 and performing an install 
with basically the same partitioning layout, this wasn't a problem.

Unfortunately, after the install I found that the BGM partition was 
corrupted.  Zeroing it out in TOS made my NetBSD install non-bootable. 
(bootloader can no longer find /boot.atari)  =\  Bummer!  But that's OK, I'm 
happy just to have a bootable NetBSD install.

The nice thing was that I can report that it _is_ possible to install via 
ftp over the Internet.  This is something the documentation is really not 
clear about.

My next challenge will be to see if I can get up to 1.6.2 or possibly 2.0.3, 
and hopefully do so in a way that doesn't corrupt the BGM filesystem.  I 
think it's possible that if I would have done the partitioning a little 
differently I could have been able to get 2.1 to boot, so maybe I'll give 
that another shot.

David Ross
dross%pobox.com@localhost


--------------------------------------------------
From: <dross00%hotmail.com@localhost>
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 11:54 PM
To: <port-atari%NetBSD.org@localhost>
Subject: Re: Question on the images in /miniroot

> Last night I managed to get my Riebl card working on 3.1.1!  From the 
> sysinst filesystem I just drop to a shell and set it up with ifconfig. 
> I'm then able to connect to ftp.netbsd.org, etc.  Fantastic.
>
> On to the next challenge...
>
> Everything seems to indicate that sysinst.fs is the way to go, and 
> prepare.fs / miniroot.fs are legacy.  So I went to kick off an install 
> through sysinst and it was unable to partition the disk, giving me an 
> error that /etc/disktab could not be opened.  This appears to be because 
> the / filesystem is read-only and the file does not exist, just as this 
> guy documented last December:
>
> http://archives.devshed.com/forums/bsd-93/install-37470-could-not-open-etc-disktab-using-sysinst-fs-2388826.html
>
> I have a hunch this may have something to do with the fact that 
> "mount_kernfs /kern /kern" doesn't do anything.  Even if / is read-only, 
> it should be able to mount the kernel parameter namespace under /kern, 
> right?
>
> Sometime in the next few days I'll jump back a few releases and see if I 
> can get to one where the / filesystem isn't read-only and/or mount_kernfs 
> works. Then I think I should be able to go through sysinst no problem.
>
> David Ross
> dross%pobox.com@localhost
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: <dross00%hotmail.com@localhost>
> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 10:29 PM
> To: "Izumi Tsutsui" <tsutsui%ceres.dti.ne.jp@localhost>
> Cc: <port-atari%NetBSD.org@localhost>; <tsutsui%ceres.dti.ne.jp@localhost>
> Subject: Re: Question on the images in /miniroot
>
> > Unfortunately the <Alt>-<LeftShift>-<F9> sequence doesn't do anything, at 
> > least with the pre-built 4.0 BOOT kernel on netbsd.org.
> >
> > But as it turns out, if I wait for a few minutes, NetBSD 4.0 actually 
> > boots past the point where I had previously noted that it freezes.  It 
> > gets up until it prints this line:
> > scsibus0: waiting 2 seconds for devices to settle...
> > At that point I left it for maybe 20 minutes and it didn't get any 
> > further.
> >
> > David Ross
> > dross%pobox.com@localhost
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------
> > From: "Izumi Tsutsui" <tsutsui%ceres.dti.ne.jp@localhost>
> > Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 8:28 AM
> > To: <dross00%hotmail.com@localhost>
> > Cc: <port-atari%NetBSD.org@localhost>; <tsutsui%ceres.dti.ne.jp@localhost>
> > Subject: Re: Question on the images in /miniroot
> >
> > > > As described above, the 4.0 kernel appears to have a bug.  It's not 
> > > > clear if
> > > > it's just my hardware, but I suspect this will happen on any TT030.  As
> > > > described in my previous mail, the 4.0 kernel locks up on boot after 
> > > > "kbd0
> > > > at mainbus0".
> > >
> > > Can you get ddb(4) prompt at that point?
> > > <Alt>-<LeftShift>-<F9> might invoke it as noted in ddb(4) man page.
> > > ---
> > > Izumi Tsutsui