re: Boot partition

Martin Husemann writes:
> On Wed, Jul 02, 2014 at 09:42:01PM +0100, Sad Clouds wrote:
> > What's the best way to tell booting kernel where root file system is
> > located? Can this be done dynamically or do I need to recompile kernel?
> 
> You hit an itching spot. Currently the easiest way is to put ofwboot and
> the kernel into the boot partition and create a custom kernel with
> 
>  config netbsd root on wd0a
> 
> in the config file.

the way i handle this is to use raidframe.  i boot multiple systems
from OFW-visible disk but root on the other disks, eg booting from
wd0, root on raid1 from wd1/wd2.  with 'raidctl -A root' you can
force a raid disk to be considered as root.

this won't need a special kernel, but it does require special setup.
you *can* also do it with a single-sided mirror, if you're not trying
to use raid1.

> The right solution (after Tyler has commited his boot.cfg parsing unification)
> would be to allow overriding of the root filesystem in boot.cfg. Also
> it should be possible (not right now, but after that commit and a few MD
> adjustement) to put "boot wd0a" into boot.cfg and just place boot.cfg and
> ofwboot inside the boot partition.

i don't think this will work, because ofwboot doesn't have drivers
for the wd0 i bet.. the kernel and ofwboot need to exist on the
OFW-visible disk.


.mrg.