[geeks] NetBSD Netboot install

Gregory Leblanc gleblanc at linuxweasel.com
Mon Apr 8 20:19:01 CDT 2002


On Sat, 2002-04-06 at 09:11, jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de wrote:
> On  5 Apr, Gregory Leblanc wrote:
> 
> > I've tried to follow the instructions on
> > www.NetBSD.org for setting things up to do a netboot/NFS install of
> > NetBSD 1.5.2 on to my SS2.  Somehow, I got tracked off somewhere that I
> > shouldn't have, and now I have the system netbooting quite nicely (I can
> > even log in), but I can't figure out how to start the installer. 
> This is a description for settnig up a netbooted, diskless machine, not
> for netbooting some "installer" stuff. So you are on the wrong road from
> the begining. ;-)

Oops, duh, I knew that.  Silly me. 

> Why do you want an "installer" if you are so far, that you have a
> complete system running diskless? Installing the system on a disk from
> a diskless boot is easy and straightforward:
> 
> disklabel sd0 > /tmp/dl		# read in core default label
> disklabel -r -R sd0 /tmp/dl	# write it to the disk
> disklabel -i sd0		# and edit it. -i needs a valid
> 				# disklabel on the disk... 
> newfs /dev/rsd0a
> newfs ....
> mount -o async /dev/sd0a /mnt	# async speeds things up during...
> mount ...
> tar xzpf /where/ever/your/dist/sets/are.tgz -C /mnt
> tar ...
> cd /mnt/dev && ./MAKEDEV all

Ah, right, that all worked, eventually (after beating the tar out of
disklabel for a couple of hours)

> cd /mnt/usr/mdec
> ../installboot ....		# works only in singe user mode

If I leave rc_configured=NO in rc.conf on the netboot filesystem, it
boots up in to what I presume to be single user mode.  However, I can't
make installboot work there.  If I change rc_configured=YES, then I
can't log in at the console.  Here's some spewage from installboot

# ./installboot boot /dev/rsd0a
Segmentation fault - core dumped

There are a bunch of scsi messages printed, but they get printed
whenever I touch anything on the disk, so I don't think that's the
problem.  BTW, he's an ls of /mnt/usr/mdec

binstall     boot         boot.388000  boot.net     bootxx       installboot

I'd love to get this machine booting, but I'm not sure what's wrong. 
Any pointers greatly appreciated.  
	Greg

-- 
Portland, Oregon, USA.



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