Re: sysinst segfaults on Alpha ("file system full") - install help

[Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost>]

On Sun, Mar 08, 2020 at 07:01:23PM -0700, John Ames wrote:
> shell with no issues, but the installer itself craps out when
> partitioning the disk.

Can you give any details on that? Like a list of steps you did to get
there?

> One thing I did notice was that /dev/mda0 (the in-memory filesystem
> for the installer) ends up very close to completely full, and part of
> that is a sysinst.core dump, but I'm not clear on whether sysinst is
> dumping core because the filesystem is full, or vice versa.

The full ramdisk does not bother sysinst, but probably some machine dependent
code in sysinst is broke (which would likely make me the culprit - I'll
see if I can fix one of my alphas and test localy).

> I think my better shot here is: can I just avoid the sysinst
> partitioning utility entirely? I can do everything needed with the
> disk from the shell, except apparently chant the proper blessing upon
> the resulting partitions. How does sysinst determine which partitions
> in the disklabel should map to which mount points in the target
> install? Where is that magic documented or stored?

The steps are:
Create disklabel, newfs the root partition, run installboot.

Then you have the choice:
 - cheat with sysinst by:
   - manually create etc/fstab on the new root partition with proper content
   - run an update (instead of an install) with sysinst

or nearly as simple:
 - do a manual install:
   - extract all sets on the new root partition
   - cd to the new dev directory and run "sh MAKEDEV all" there

I will deal with the sysinst fallout.

Martin