Subject: install problems with bootmenu and X11/wscons, and a sysinst comment
To: None <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Eric McWhorter <emcwhorter@xsis.xerox.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 05/30/2000 16:03:07
First, I upgraded a production box from 1.3.2 to 1.4.2 this weekend.
It went well enough that my head won't end up on a block, so thanks go 
out to all those who worked on the upgrade proceedure, the i386 FAQ,
and the wscons FAQ.

Under threat of a really boring assignment, I'm being forced to do
some development on NT.  So, I want to dual boot a PC.  I thought I'd
first try to add NetBSD to the NT boot menu.  The instructions say if
NetBSD is not on the first disk (it is on the second disk in my case), 
I need to hack /usr/src/sys/arch/i386/boot.  I got my source tree from 
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.4.2/source/sets/syssrc.tgz,
which seems to be missing /usr/src/sys/arch/i386/boot.  Where do I get 
/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/boot for NetBSD 1.4.2?

I then tried to use bootmenu, which apparently doesn't work when all
partitions used to boot are not on the same hard disk, unless I missed
something.  Can bootmenu be used to boot different partitions on
different disks?  It wasn't clear to me whether or not this is
possible after reading the FAQ and the fdisk man page.

Using wscons, I can switch between a text console and my X server fine 
as long as my X server is using 8 bit planes.  However, if my X server 
(XF86_Mach64) is using 16 bit planes, the X server starts okay, but if 
I switch out of the X server I can't get back to it.  If I kill the X
server and restart it, it works until I switch out of it again.  It
sounds like maybe it's a X11 problem, but it worked under NetBSD 1.3.2 
with pcvt.  For grins, I tried installing XFree86 4.0 from source,
which didn't run at all, then XFree86 3.3.6 from source, which worked
but had the same problem.

Thanks!

-- 
Eric McWhorter
Xerox Special Information Systems
emcwhorter@xsis.xerox.com