On 2002.09.08 19:41 Patrick Finnegan wrote:

> But, there is a working kernel... the one in '7043boot.fs'.  All that
> needs to be done is make an install image with that kernel on it.  If
> I knew how to do that myself, I would.
If you can boot the machine diskless with that kernel, you don't need
any special install image.=20

> OK, what do I need on that rootfs in order to make it do an
> installation?
In short: RTFM http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/

> Or, can I just explode the tarballs into the nfsroot for it and just
> use fdisk/mkfs/cp to move everything over? =20
In long: Yes. You need bootp + tftp too load the kernel and to inform
the kernel, once it wants to mount the NFS root, where to mount what.
You must un-tar at least etc.tgz and base.tgz into the NFS root and run
"./MAKEDEV all" in the /dev directory of the NFS root. Remember to
export the NFS root with "-alldirs -maproot=3Droot:wheel".=20
When the system is running diskless, just dd the floppy image to the
disk, edit the MBR partition table with fdisk to add the NetBSD
partition. (Type 169?) put a disklabel on that BSD partition. Create at
least a "a" slice for /, a "b" slice for swap (at least as big as you
have RAM in the machine to be able to store a crash dump) and I
recommend a extra "e" slice for /usr. newfs the slices, mount them (with
"-o async" to speed up un-tar-ing), un-tar the sets you need ("tar
xzpf"), "cd /mnt/dev ; ./MAKEDEV all", edit /mnt/etc/rc.conf (see
/mnt/etc/defaults/rc.conf for all options) and that's it.=20

> I'm about to just try hooking the drive up to my PC and
> partitioning/mkfsing/exploding the tarballs using it.
This will be (very?) problematic as the i386 PeeCee CPU is litle endian
and the PPC CPU is big endian. So you will need at lest "options      =20
FFS_EI" in yor i386 kernel.=20

> It's got some 'x86 boot sector' tacked on the front... so it's not
> quite plain ELF.  Also, what follows it (after stripping off the=20
> first 512 bytes) isn't 'plain ELF' either.
I assumeed somthing like that. I hadn't the time to make further
investigations yet. (I am currently moving to a new flat and was at the
Linux-Kongress to do some BSD propaganda last week...)=20
--=20



tsch=FC=DF,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/