Re: Testing sysinst.fs

[David Brownlee <abs%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008, David Ross wrote:

> David's latest sysinst (http://mono.org/abs/sysinst6.fs.gz) appears to run 
> installboot properly.  At least I get good output from it (I think the 
> same as I saw with a working NetBSD 1.6.1 install).  I'm just not sure yet 
> if it really worked because I can't get to a bootable state yet.  But 
> assuming it does, nice work!
>
> The next step for me was to get booted up on the ATARITT kernel where I 
> have networking.  From there I tried an install to see if the hard drive 
> boot will work.  I'm happy to report that as of the 11/09 build, the 
> ATARITT kernel boots for me and I can get networking.  But getting further 
> with the install has been difficult...
>
> I made two attempts tonight to get 200811090002Z installed but in both 
> cases I hit different kernel panics.  The first one died extracting the 
> first large set.  I got:
>
> [... panic details ...]

        As Tuomo suggested, the panics may be fixed by trying a kernel
        with ST_POOL_SIZE=24 - I've put one up at:

            http://mono.org/abs/netbsd-24.gz

> David, I think you had previously discussed some changes that would cut 
> down the size of the ATARITT kernel.  Please do make that change, since as 
> of right now the ATARITT kernel is just slightly over the size of a 1.44MB 
> floppy when gzip'd.  I used ghostlink to transfer it, but it's a bit 
> awkward and slow.

        The changes I made (already committed) dropped the size of
        the ATARITT kernel by around 170K by removing 68040 support.

        How are you copying the kernel across - putting the gzipped
        file on a floppy then using TOS to copy it onto the harddisk
        before booting it?

        There are a few options to avoiding ghostlink, some would be:

        a) Drop some devices or filesystem/protocol support

        b) strip the kernel - this removes the symbol table and which is
           used to provide the backtrace on a panic, but if you just
           want to see if things work it can be helpful. If you are cross
           compiling your NetBSD kernels from another box you should find
           build.sh has left a strip binary as
               tooldir.$(OS)/bin/m68k--netbsdelf-strip
           And you can just run .../bin/m68k--netbsdelf-strip .../netbsd
           I've put a stripped version of netbsd-24.gz as:
               http://mono.org/abs/netbsd-24stripped.gz
           It *should* work fine, but if you hit issues try the netbsd-24.gz
           one above.

        c) Use bzip2 (gunzip  first if its gzipped). You'll need a bunzip2
           binary or other tool which can extract bzip2 on the atari side,
           but the above kernel which is 1440K gzipped is 1344K bzip2ed

        d) Split the file up. 'split -b 1400k netbsd.gz' will split
           netbsd.gz into multiple files named xaa, xab, etc. To
           put them back together in NetBSD (or any other system
           with a 'cat' command) just run:
               cat xaa xab > netbsd.gz

        e) Adopt the split floppy bootloader approach as used by
           NetBSD/i386 and various other ports. This is similar to
           NetBSD/atari's code to load the miniroot from multiple
           floppies, except the bootloader knows how to load a
           kernel from multiple floppies.

        Longterm e) is probably the preferred option :)

> Also, even thought we don't yet know for sure if boot works yet, your 
> installboot change at least allows me to get further with the install. 
> Can you submit it?

        Could you test netbsd-24.gz or netbsd-24stripped.gz first? I'd
        prefer to commit all the changes together and retire the old
        miniroot / prepare code at the same time :)

        Thanks
--
                David/absolute       -- www.NetBSD.org: No hype required --