Re: sysinst, serial console on soekris

On Mon, Jan 01, 2007 at 04:38:26PM -0500, Mark E. Perkins wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure where I went wrong on the first install, but I think that when I
> ran installboot (from the shell I got via sysinst) I did not specify the raw
> device (which should have been obvious if I had done a more careful RTFM for
> installboot).

I've a fix for installboot for that in the pipeline (after I found it
wasn't updating the boot area when regression testing it).

It appears that the 'you can't overwrite the disklabel' code is rather
overzelous when you write to the sectors near the label using the non-raw
device.  So although the write() suceeds, the data doesn't get to the disk!

Calling fsync() and then doing a verify read shows that the update has
been ignored.

My modifications to installboot should let the i386 code work on non-512
byte media - where the label will be in the same physical sector as the
boot code (so it has to enable writes to the label sector).

It is also worth noting that you can pxeboot a GENERIC kernel and get it to
use the local disk as its root filesystem.
Just interrupt the downcount in pxeboot (you might need to lengthen it, since
the delay function it uses isn't supported by the soekris bios), then do:
> boot netbsd.gz -a
and type wd0a for the root filesystem (etc).

	David

-- 
David Laight: [email protected]