Re: NetBSD/mipsco and Prime EXL7330

[Wayne Knowles <wdk%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Sun, 15 Sep 2002, [ISO-8859-1] Trond Endrestøl wrote:

> I have a Prime EXL7330 (M/20) currently running RISC/os 4_52.p2.
> Is NetBSD/mipsco safe enough to be used on a production system?

I don't have direct experience with the Prime product family, but based on
the M/20 label, and knowing that at least one of their machines is a
re-badged Mips3230 it sounds like you have the right machine.

As for production quality, it is extreemly robust against all the tests I
have thrown at it - and have had a system running for 100 days.  However
YMMV.

> If NetBSD/mipsco is usable for my purposes, I'm planning to use a
> SPARCstation IPC to rig the filesystems. This EXL has two harddrives,
> a couple of Maxtor LXT200SY.

Hopefully you don't need to go to that much trouble.  You can "dd" a copy
of the install image to the raw partition (slice 10?) of the 2nd disk
using RISC/os :

ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/mipsco/snapshot/20010523/installation/diskimage/

(you need to gunzip the image first...)

There is also a netboot image in the parent directory if you are willing
to try setting up a TFTP server.

The installimage has been disabled from the 1.6 build because of a few
cross compile issues that I haven't had time to investigate yet.

Once you have the install image booted, you need to shell out and update
your disk parameters using "disklabel -i sdX" then select "I" to update
the disklabel with the correct parameters (sector counts, size of c
partition etc)

To boot the install kernel off the 2nd disk, you can use
  "boot dksd(,1,8)boot"

Assuming 1 is the SCSI ID of the NetBSD disk.   If you have additional
disks such as a narrow 1GB drive around you can add that to the system -
the firmware has no trouble with a 4GB drive on my machine.

>
> I figure I put the root filesystem and the swap partition on sdc0d0s0
> and sdc0d0s1, and let sdc0d1s0 be the /usr filesystem.

Best policy if it is possible is to dedicate the 2nd drive to NetBSD.
NetBSD will share a RISC/os volume header but a lot more care is required.

You can share the swap partition between the 2, and there is no need to
update disk labels.

>
> Where can I find the directions to achieve all of this?
> I've looked at the website, but there's not much to go on there.

See above, and use the latest 1.6 snapshot for the distribution files.

Using the install kernel above, you can install the files for NetBSD 1.6
which has just been released.  It worked for the latest Beta... I don't
expect any problems with the official release, which I have not tested
yet.

> I believe once I get past running disklabel and newfs, the remaining
> tasks should be rather easy. Or maybe not...

If you install the install image on a drive you can install it like any
other NetBSD distribution...

> How should I run disklabel and newfs, and avoiding upsetting the MIPS
> volume label?

It hasn't been tested aggressively.  It will read the RISC/os label, and
write out both a RISC/os compatible and NetBSD label (into sector 1).

> By the way, what value can I put in the bootmode PROM variable so that
> this machine boots automatically? bootmode is currently set to m, will
> a value of a help?

Setting it to "a" will auto boot.  If it reverts back to "m" then the prom
diags detected an error somewhere.

Good Luck!

-- 
Wayne Knowles                   NetBSD/mipsco port maintainer
wdk%netbsd.org@localhost                        http://www.netbsd.org