Subject: Building a custom boot floppy
To: None <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Wes Zuber <wes@uia.net>
List: port-i386
Date: 02/26/2000 17:45:43
How do I go about building a boot floppy with my custom kernal? I am trying to
install 1.4.1 on a Compaq Laptop.
The custom kernal when gzip'ed is about 600k so it will fit on one disk.
Here are the steps I have taken.
1. rawrite boot.fs from my NT machine.
2. mount /dev/fd0a /mnt -- in my NetBSD Server
3. gzip netbsd -c -9 < netbsd > /mnt/netbsd
Drop this in the lap top and it does not boot at all.. Ok so I try to
installboot -f /usr/mdec/biosboot.sym /dev/rfd0a
That puts a boot file on the floppy.
Try again from the lap top and this time I get the boot message and it probes.
I get a some messages such as:
WARNING: old BSD partition ID!
WARNING: old BSD partition ID!
wd0 no disk label
boot device: fd0
root on md0a dumps on md0b
no file system for md0 (dev 0x1100)
cannot mount root, error = 79
root device (default md0a):
I used the "INSTALL" conf to build the kernal while commenting out a couple of
things that I did not want to get probed.
Does the ramdisk and root file system get handled by the netbsd binary when
using the INSTALL type hooks in the conf file ?
Does someone have a recepie for making a custom floppy boot kernal? How would
one go about building a completely GENERIC kernal for instance?
--Wes