In "Sun 3 X11R6.3 Binaries and Xkernel Now Available", Curt Sampson
<cjs@portal.ca> wrote: 

| I've put up Ian Dall's X11R6.3 binaries and patches for the Sun 3
| on ftp://ftp.cynic.net/ftp/pub/NetBSD/X11-sun3, if anyone wants
| them. There's also an Xkernel root image there to allow the use of
| those old 3/50s as Xterms.

I'm typing this on my Sun 3/60, running Ian's Xkernel.  Thanks Ian and
Curt!

I am very impressed that the whole thing fits in a 1.5M tar.gz file.

I found it a little tricky figuring out how to set it up.  I never
found a perfect recipe.  Curt mailed me DISKLESS(8), which helped, but
it didn't totally match Ian's package.

Here are some incomplete notes to help future explorers.

- I created a root for the Xkernel by simply unpacking the tar.gz
  in a suitable place on my host.  I got in.rarpd and bootparamd
  running on my Solaris 2.5 host in ways described by DISKLESS(8) and
  other messages I've sent.  I won't describe them here because the
  procedure depends on the host system.

- The key script is in the Sun 3's /sbin/init.

- /sbin/init has some references to "sibyl" which is Ian's host
  machine, but probably not yours.  You ought to change each of these.

- /sbin/init runs /etc/ifconfig_cmd.*, presumable to configure various
  network interfaces.  There are no such files supplied, so I created
  /etc/ifconfig_cmd.dummy with "ifconfig -a" to see what was already
  configured.  le0 and lo0 seemed already correct, so nothing else was
  needed.  If there is no such file, the shell complains; this
  probably doesn't matter, but it caused me concern when other things
  misbehaved.

- /etc/fstab contains an entry to mount something from sibyl.  Since
  the root is already mounted, I just commented this out.

- I filled in /etc/hosts (and ditched sibyl's entry).  I'm not sure
  which entries matter, but I have more than I need.

- I filled in /etc/myname as per DISKLESS(8).  I don't know if this
  matters.  I did not fill in hostname.le0 since I didn't understand
  what was meant by the description.

At this point, things began to work.  Of course some customization is
needed.

I don't really know how to cleanly shut the system down.  I think that
the kernel is mounted read-only (I don't know how to run commands on
the system other than in /sbin/init), just powering off while in XDM
seems OK.

Hugh Redelmeier
hugh@mimosa.com  voice: +1 416 482-8253