> I'm trying to get my NetBSD/i386-current (1.6ZA) system to 
> boot from a RAID 1 root file system, but I'm having no luck 
> getting fdisk and installboot to do what I want...  :-(
> 
> I understand that the primary bootstrap is able to locate 
> /boot on a RAID 1 set in partition xx0a, because it checks 
> for the extra 64 block offset to the actual file system.  I'm 
> also reserving space at the start of the disk for the BIOS 
> and bootstrap to use.  I've read that at least a whole track 
> must be set aside, so after looking at my various disks, I 
> figured 512 sectors would be plenty for any disk.

My expertise in this area is severely limited, but I believe that it
isn't possible to actually _boot_ from a raid set. At least not from a
striped array, and possibly not from a raid-1 either. The bootstrap code
needs to locate the kernel, and this would require that the bootstrap
code itself had knowledge about the raid array, which is doesnt. Since a
raid-1 is basically two mirrored disks this should be possible to work
out somehow (and maybe it has?), but I think not.
 
When I was running with a root on a raid-5, I had to keep a small
partition (mine was 128Mb, but anything that will fit a kernel will do)
that the system could boot from, and then the kernel mounted the raid
set as the root file system.

// Thomas Hertz