Re: Installation Error For Mac68k NetBSD on SE/30

Thanks, everyone, for all the suggestions! I appreciate the quick responses!

> The Booter SCSI code is old, and I have a hunch that it expects the
> root partition within the first GB of the disk. You may have to
> re-arrange your partitioning.

Hauke - that's a decent idea, thanks! I might try putting NetBSD on a
second disk (SCSI 1, or whatever) so that it has its own virtual HDD.


> The better way to do an installation these days is to download an install
> kernel (mac68k/installation/instkernel), boot that with Booter, then use
> sysinst to format your partitions and install NetBSD.

John - For that, do I just need to unpack netbsd-INSTALL.gz and place
that on the Unix partition? Or would the booter just work with the gz
directly from the HFS partition while Mac OS is running?


> I'm assuming the installation was done with the "modern" method and not
> with the "traditional" method, since the traditional method doesn't seem
> to work any more at all (it creates the wrong, older type, of ffs root
> filesystem).

Stan - I was following this guide:
http://users.erols.com/ewinkler/installguide/installguide.html

I'm not sure if that counts as "traditional" or "modern".

Thanks again all,
RJ

On Sun, Aug 6, 2023 at 4:21 PM Stan Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm assuming the installation was done with the "modern" method and not
> with the "traditional" method, since the traditional method doesn't seem
> to work any more at all (it creates the wrong, older type, of ffs root
> filesystem).
>
> I think it would make sense (easy for me to say since I'm not much of a
> programmer) to bring back the traditional method, since that would be
> the fastest way to install on some slow machines such as the SE/30. Do
> the installation on something faster, like a Beige G3 Desktop running
> Mac OS 9.2.2, and it wouldn't be necessary to find a still-working SCSI
> CD-ROM or wait overnight for a CD-based installation on 680x0 to finish.
>
> The traditional method would have to be modified to support the more
> modern ffs filesystem (so Mkfs would need to be updated, too), and the
> one-GB-size limit on the rootfs would have to be changed. I have Think C
> v5.0, and I can help with testing and maybe some basic troubleshooting.
>
> The last time I installed NetBSD (9.0 I think) was on a IIci, and I then
> moved the rootfs to an SE/30, but that process was pretty slow.
>
> -Stan
>
> -----
>
> On 8/6/23 11:53 AM, John Klos wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> >> Hi, I'm trying to install NetBSD on my SE/30. I'm running it with
> >> Rominator II, 128MB of RAM, and a BlueSCSI. The BlueSCSI has a single
> >> "physical" 6GB disc on it at SCSI #0, which has the following
> >> partitions:
> >> - Mac Driver partition
> >> - Macintosh HD (HFS, around 2GB)
> >> - Internal Storage (HFS, around 2GB)
> >> - NetBSD Usr/Sys (Formatted with mkfs, a little under 2GB)
> >> - NetBSD Swap (Formatted with mkfs, 32MB)
> >
> > Looks good so far, except of course you don't need to format swap.
> >
> >> I followed the instructions on the website, but I'm getting this error
> >> when running installation program:
> >> Error on SCSIRead(), # 5
> >> failed mountfs(), error 22
> >> Error mounting root.
> >> mount root. : Undefined error: 0
> >>
> >> This makes me think there's something wrong with my filesystem, but
> >> formatting the user/sys and swap filesystems seemed to work correctly.
> >> Any idea what this could mean? Thanks in advance!
> >
> > There's been talk about changing the docs for a while because the older
> > MacOS tools aren't all that robust.
> >
> > The better way to do an installation these days is to download an
> > install kernel (mac68k/installation/instkernel), boot that with Booter,
> > then use sysinst to format your partitions and install NetBSD.
> >
> > I really should do a from-scratch run throuh and update the docs some
> > time soon...
> >
> > John