Hi,

I am just about to complete a 19990620 snapshot install on an IPX. Being
spoiled by mac68k, I simply untarred the whole lot to a new disk, tried to
boot the thing and took some time to figure out why it wouldn't.

Bootblocks, first stage, second stage, ah yes. Dumped the miniroot to sd0b,
rebooted, fiddled around with the contents of /usr/mdec, got rid of the
OpenFirmware error message in change for a solid freeze. Pilot error, maybe.

Next I looked for a bootfloppy. Any particular reason why the snapshots
lack floppy images? - The 1.4 INSTALL document needs an update wrt. boot
floppies, it doesn't mention them at all. What exactly are the four images
in installation/ for?

Finally, I picked the syboot 1.4 image which worked. I tried to install the
boot blocks from the 1.4D /usr/mdec, which did not work:

# ./binstall -v -m/mnt/usr/mdec ffs /mnt
Inspecting "/dev/md0a on / type ffs (local)"
Inspecting "kernfs on /kern type kernfs (local)"
Inspecting "/dev/sd0a on /mnt type ffs (local)"
Boot device: /dev/rsd0a
Target: /mnt/boot
1842+1 records in
1842+1 records out
58968 bytes transferred in 1 secs (58968 bytes/sec)
/mnt/usr/mdec/installboot -v /mnt/boot /mnt/usr/mdec/bootxx /dev/rsd0a
/mnt/usr/mdec/installboot: 1: Syntax error: "(" unexpected
#

Using the 1.4 installboot gave me

# /usr/mdec/installboot -v /mnt/boot /mnt/usr/mdec/bootxx /dev/rsd0a
boot: /mnt/boot
proto: /mnt/usr/mdec/bootxx
device: /dev/rsd0a
architecture: sun4c
installboot: /mnt/usr/mdec/bootxx: invalid address: block_table = 576977:
Undefined error: 0
#

so I ended up installing the 1.4 boot blocks from the floppy which worked fine.

-- I know that installing boot blocks is meant to be sysinst's job, but,
given the still limited reliability of that tool, there should be _some_
documentation (install docs, faq) on doing it by hand.

	hauke


--
"It's never straight up and down"     (DEVO)