On Fri, 26 Jul 1996, Aaron Mansheim wrote:

> 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.

As I recall, this "building databases" stage is where the first large 
buffer writes happen to the disk.  I recall running into similar problems 
a long time ago while working on the SCSI driver.

You might try using the sbc SCSI driver instead of the ncr5380 driver.  I 
don't remember the URL, but there should be a GENERIC-sbc kernel aound 
somewhere on one of the ftp sites.