On 7/26/05, Andy Ruhl <acruhl@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/26/05, Jochen Kunz <jkunz@unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> wrote:
> > On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:37:19 -0700
> > Andy Ruhl <acruhl@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > # dd if=3Dbugs1.fs of=3D/dev/sd0d seek=3D64
> > > > dd: /dev/sd0d: Device not configured
> > > >
> > > > Where bugs1.fs is the name of the boot image I created and
> > > > successfully netbooted.
> > You need to dd(1) this image beginning with sector 0. I.e. omit the
> > "seek" parameter.
>=20
> Gotcha.
>=20
> > > > Also, following convention, the "d" partition in disklabel is
> > > > suppposed to cover the entire disk, right? Well, this isn't the cas=
e
> > > > for me:
> > This is a bit broken in prep, it seems. Usually I edit the disklabel so
> > the "c" slice coveres the entire disk from sector "0" to the end. Then =
I
> > dd(1) the boot image to slice "c".
>=20
> Yeah, I think prep doesn't want to set up "c" as the NetBSD part, and
> "d" as the entire disk. I took your advice below on setting this up.
>=20
> > > Ok, I definitely need to redo the disk. I didn't realize that the a
> > > partition starts from the begining. That's a problem.
> > dd(1) the boot image to sector 0. This will overwrite the MBR partition
> > table. The image contains its own MBR partition table with a valid boot
> > partition. Edit this MBR partition table so that the NetBSD partition
> > starts and ends at the same sectors as before. Don't touch the boot
> > partition and everything will be fine. No need to reinstall.
>=20
> Well, actually take a look at the "a" part again. It starts from 0.
> That's no good. I re-did it to start after the first fdisk partition,
> and of course that will require me to either restore "a" or reinstall.
> I did a dump of "a" over NFS but I had some weird NFS problems (does
> prep act strange as an NFS client?). We'll see. I don't have too much
> time invested so re-installing wouldn't be the end of the world,
> either.
>=20
> Seems kind of weird that disklabel behaves like this.
>=20
> Once again, thanks for your help. I'm hoping to make a post to this
> list with the stuff I've learned. Seems that it's mostly the same as
> the older releases though.

Ok, so I finally have it booting from disk after reading this post:

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-prep/2005/01/25/0002.html

Somehow when I originally did fdisk and disklabel, my "a" partition
started from the front of the disk which is no good. I guess you need
to pay special attention on these when you do your fdisk and disklabel
partitioning? It all seems kind of hokey the way it works compared to
other ports, but it's working so I can't complain too much.

Having a netboot server available or a good boot floppy for the
sysinst.fs kernel is just about mandatory to clean up any mistakes
made, at least for me.

The obvious question is, can we get a bootloader which understands how
to go to the proper root disk instead of putting a kernel at the front
of the disk and hacking around with the fdisk partitions every time we
want a new kernel? That would be really nice...

But again, the end result is many mornings worth of hacking and
finally a booting 2.0.2 installation from hard disk on my 7248
machine.

I'll try to write this down in another post from start to finish:

o How to netboot
o How to prepare the disk
o How to install
o How to get it booting from disk
o How to fix the fdisk partitions once you've got it booting from disk

I guess that's it?

Andy