In message <9611308519.AA851997411@hudsmtphq.hud.gov>, Adrian_Roseboom@hud.gov 
writes:
>  >>No.  sunlabel ought to create perfectly good big-endian labels even on 
>  >>little-endian machines, though I haven't been able to test it (yet). 
>  >>And the miniroot image is just an octet stream.
>  >>
>  >>Endianism would play a role only if you were trying to actually 
>  >>construct a filesystem on the little-endian machine - for exmaple, if 
>  >>you were trying to use a NetBSD/i386 machine to newfs and extract the 
>  >>tarballs.  Then you _would_ have endian problems.
>  
>  >I've succesfully used your sunlabel program, and a canned miniroot to 
>  >create a NetBSD/sparc boot disk from a NetBSD/i386 machine.  It was 
>  >actually pretty easy.  Thanks for this utility, it's saved me a couple 
>  >of times. 8-)
>  
>  So... if my labels are OK but all I need to do is newfs my disk, I can do 
>  this on a PC based *nix system?  It would be oh so easy for me to pop the 
>  drive in and do a CD based boot of Redhat at work (just runs off the CD 
>  and boot disks).  Then I should be able to newfs the sucker and go from 
>  there.  I can tapeboot just fine at home but that doesn't include newfs 
>  :(.  At that point I can dd it from the tape drive.  Why oh why isn't 
>  newfs available in the tape boot media (asking innocently but completely 
>  ignorantly ;)  I can disklabel all I like but without newfs yer kinda 
>  stuck.  I don't wanna be whiny, I'm just curious.

Nope -- the i386 newfs will create a little-endian file system.  What you 
need to do is use dd(1) to copy a miniroot on to your disk, then use sunlabel
to give that disk a valid label.  dd(1) is just copying raw bits, it doesn't
care about byte order.

>  
>  -Adrian
>
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Jeremy C. McDermond                                     mcdermj@xenotropic.com
Xenotropic Imaging Systems
"Stupidity is like Nuclear Power; It can be used for good or evil...
 and you don't want to get any on you."                 --From a Dilbert strip
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