I would still like to ask for information about what's supposed
to happen when "building databases" in the multi-user boot sequence
and why it might not be working for me.

I now notice that I can boot single-user. However, I still can't
get past the "building databases..." message when booting
multi-user. I presume this refers to '/etc/pwd.db', '/etc/spwd.db',
and possibly file in the 'namedb' directory?

Again, the symptoms are that the drive access light comes on and stays
on, with no other evidence of drive activity, and there is no
apparent activity for hours afterward. My system is a Mac SE/30
5/40 with 170 Mb external drive devoted to MacBSD; Mac System 7.0.1-
bullet with MODE32 and Disinfectant the only extensions. I partitioned
with Apple HD SC Setup for 12 Mb swap plus a root & usr partition,
did Mkfs on the root & usr, installed with (1.1) base11, netbsd11,
etc11, and secr11 from ftp.netbsd.org, and used Booter 1.8.

Here are some ways I can imagine this getting fixed, a rather
scattershot list because I don't know what's causing the problem:

- fresh copy of netbsd11. Tried it.
- fresh copy of etc11. I'll try this. Wish there were checksums.
- updated disk driver. I'll try this also. The current one was
  installed with Drive 7 software, so I'll try to update with 
  Apple HD SC Setup 7.3.5.
- new improved kernel.
- some commands to be used in single-user mode.
  Of course that the filesystem is read-only limits the possibilities.
- a tarred gzip from some kind person which overwrites whatever is
  causing the problem with whatever needs to be there instead,
  to be installed with the Mac-side installer.
- I could get the kernel source code and read relevant parts.
  Conceivable, but probably not what I want to do.

Thanks to Dirk Mahoney for responding to my earlier inquiry.
-- 
Aaron Mansheim, MS exp '97, Computational Sciences, Radford University
<mailto:a-manshe@runet.edu> <http://www.runet.edu/~a-manshe/>