Please forgive me, Anne, I'm going to ask the obvious questions first.

Did you remember to do

	cd /usr/mdec
	./installboot biosboot.sym /dev/rwd0a

?

The bootcode might be assuming something about your boot device.

Did you happen to do the hard-coding-the-devices-in-the-kernel
kind of thing?  That can cause this kind of difficulty.

You should also be able to specify:

boot wd0a:netbsd -sa

and have the kernel ask you for your boot device.  This should work.

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Anne Bennett wrote:

# Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 00:37:32 -0500
# From: Anne Bennett <anne@alcor.concordia.ca>
# To: port-i386@netbsd.org
# Subject: booting wrong partition (1.4.1)
#
#
# Someone please save my sanity!
#
# My work on making the SCSI board work in the new system (for those of you
# following my trials and tribulations in this respect) is temporarily on
# hiatus because I have had another disk failure on the old system, so task
# #1 has been to recover the data and get the old system back on its feet.
#
# I ended up buying an IDE disk (much cheaper than SCSI!), and copying
# my data onto it.  In fact, I now have two copies of the O/S (not
# counting the one on the flakey SCSI disk sd1):
#
#   copy #1:  root  sd0e
#   (SCSI)    usr   sd0g
#             root  sd0a  <- this one lets the system boot from the
#                            bootblocks, but I specify "boot
#                            sd0e:netbsd" at the boot prompt and it
#                            seems to do the right thing:
#                              boot device: sd0
#                              root on sd0e dumps on sd0b
#                            I am going to put 1.5.2 on sd0a/sd0f when I
#                            have time, which is why 1.4.1 is in a weird
#                            place.  Both sd0a and sd0e have a 1.4.1
#                            root filesystem for now.
#
#   copy #2: root wd0a
#   (IDE)    usr  wd0e
#                           this copy will not boot properly.  When I
#                           specify "boot wd0a:netbsd", or even "boot
#                           wd0a:netbsd.generic" at the boot prompt, I
#                           get:
#                             boot device sd0
#                             root on sd0a dumps on sd0b
#                           I even tried doing the initial part of the
#                           boot from floppy, then asking for a boot
#                           from wd0a: still the same.
#
# I am going nuts.  *Why* is this system's initial boot code apparently
# agreeing to boot from my IDE disk (wd0), then sneakily booting from my
# SCSI disk (sd0)???
#
#
# Anne.
# --
# Ms. Anne Bennett, Senior Analyst, IITS, Concordia University, Montreal H3G 1M8
# anne@alcor.concordia.ca                                        +1 514 848-7606
#


				--*greywolf;
--
NetBSD: safe ports in a storm.