> But I manage easily to boot on tape and to enter SYS_INST.  My
> problem is with disklabel.  I don't know anything about the partition
> naming scheme, since I am more of a Linux/i386 person (sorry to say
> that :-)...

Fortunately partition naming is pretty straightforward under NetBSD.
Disks have names like "sd0" or "wd2" or "rd1"; partitions are named by
single letters from a through h (some ports support more than 8
partitions per pack, in which case more letters are used).  These are
concatented, producing things like "sd0g" or "wd2d" or "rd1a".

Normally, the c partition is "the whole disk"; the i386 port changes
this slightly (I think d is the whole disk and c is the NetBSD portion
of the disk).  For boot disks, traditionally, a is the root filesystem
and b is swap space; neither of these is cast in stone, but if you try
to change them you will find an annoying number of things "know" that a
is root and b is swap.  (For non-boot disks, a and b are not special,
though there is a tradition that if a disk has a swap area, it's
partition b.)

In SYS_INST, the names like sd0 and rd1 don't appear to be used (I
didn't install via SYS_INST, so I'm guessing from the 1.2 INSTALL
document).

> When I boot from tape, the 9144A is at select code 7, address0, and
> the hard disk is at select code 14, address 2... when I blindly try
> to enter the number after calculating it from the formula given in
> the INSTALL file, it says 'Device not configured'... what am I doing
> wrong ?

This I haven't a clue with.  You may find it worth doing what I did,
which was to install 1.0 from HP-UX and then do a binary upgrade to
1.2.

> On the tape, I just copied the SYS_INST, as a first step, in order to
> see whether I'd have the disklabel-ing done or not ... but I'd like
> to know if I can install from NFS from my linux box holding the
> NetBSD-1.2 distribution, after having booted from the tape...?

I'd guess you can, though I have never tried it.  It looks to me as
though it should work to install from any NFS or FTP server.

> I thank everyone who'll answer me.  I don't really know the customs
> of the NetBSD community, but I hope this will not be taken as spam or
> whatever!

I don't think you have any call to be concerned on that count.  Your
message was polite, reasonable, and on-topic for the list you sent it
to...which adds up to "no problem".

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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