On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Colin Wood wrote:
> El JoPe Magnifico wrote:
>>>>> got it to boot into single-user mode, with one small glitch:
>>>>> the file system is mounted read-only rather than read-write.
> 
> If you follow the install doc precisely, root will be
> mounted read/write when /etc/rc discovers that rc.conf hasn't been
> configured yet and drops you into single-user mode.

Finally got it to mount read-write.  The reason it was going read-only
was do to the bombing of the initial fsck during boot.  It was failing 
with a "Bad system call" error because (as one person suggested) my
binaries (from the snapshot as of a couple weeks ago) were out of sync 
with the kernel I was using (1.3.2). After installing the matching 1.3.2
base and etc packages, fsck successfully ran at boot, and the system 
came up read-write as expected.  However (it's always somethin')...

I still get a "bad system call" error from vi and then a core dump, 
and likewise with more.  Other utils that were doing that (like fsck)
are now working fine though.  I did the prescribed "export TERM=vt220"
beforehand and /usr is on the same partition, so it's not that.  And
to the best of my knowledge, my binaries and kernel are now in sync,
albeit the 1.3.2 versions dated May 17th.  (So far, this is farther
than more recent kernels have gotten.)  Ideas?  

Other oddities, questions and comments...

* I've read the FAQ and INSTALL docs til I'm blue in the face.  
  I have the FAQ mirrored on my hard drive.  I have the INSTALL and 
  relevant portions of the FAQ (installation at this point) printed out
  and in my lap while trying to get my system up.  If I ask a question,
  it's not because I was too lazy to read the FAQ.  I do realize y'all
  have better things to do then answer stupid newbie questions.  =)

* There are kern.tgz and kern_sbc.tgz dated June 3rd in the
    /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.3.2/mac68k/binary/sets 
  directory, versus the two GENERIC kernels dated May 17th in the
    /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.3.2/mac68k/binary/kernel
  directory.  Everything else in .../sets is dated May 16th.
  So what are those kern and kern_sbc.tgz kernels in .../sets?
  At least one of them is a different size from its counterpart
  in .../kernel, so they aren't identical.  Functionally I haven't
  found any difference (not that my system is particularly functional
  right now), but I was wondering just in case.

* On the same point, I'm getting conflicting responses about the
  seriousness of having one's kernel and binaries being out of sync.
  I suppose the answer is "it depends", but still... does one need 
  to download (urgh) and reinstall (urgh) matching binaries every
  time a new kernel is tried, in order to avoid these kinds of
  complications?  Is there some kind of compatability notice
  accompanying a given snapshot which indicates so?  Just trying
  to avoid unnecessary (and time-consuming) downloads.

* The 19980725 kernel was still trying to mount my root&usr parition as
  ext2fs instead of ffs and then dying with something like "ext2fs_baddir".
  This was using the binaries from a couple weeks prior though.
  Dumb question: is this something inherent to the kernel or to mount?
  And I know, I know, I should try with the matching binaries from that
  snapshot (whoops, or rather, both kernel and binaries from today's).

Thanks for being patient...

--
 J.P. Montagnet
 jope@n2h2.com
 El JoPe Magnifico!