Bernd Wiserner asked:

> am I the only one who can't boot -current off floppies or is this 
> a more general problem ?

I have a similar problem, but I don't think it is related...

I have a kernel floppy containing a kernel built from June 1st sources (or
perhaps May 31st ... timezones are so confusing...!).  That kernel will boot
happily on a 33Mhz 486 with a micronics mother board, but will not boot on a
33Mhz 386 (unknown motherboard, but the PC is an "AT&T Starstation", with
phoenix bios).  Both machines have 8MB of memory; the 386 doesn't have a
coprocessor.

On the 386, it gets to the "Insert file system floppy" prompt OK.  I type
return, and in four or five places on the screen, random flashing characters
appear, as though something has just overwritten part of the screen memory.
The autoconfiguration continues OK, but on finishing that, the machine just
resets itself.

I've compiled a kernel with DDB and when I boot that I get the following...

	...
	autoconf stuff
	...
	changing root device to fd0a
	wd0: cannot find label (no disk label)
	wd0: cannot find label (no disk label)
	vm_fault(f817b924, 7200000, 1, 0) -> 5
	kernel: page fault trap, code=0
	Stopped at	_malloc+0x2b1:	movl	0(%edx),%ecx
	db> trace
	_malloc(108,19,0,f8194230,f8170100) at _malloc+0x2b1
	_getnewvnode(0,0,f816c4e8,f7bfff38) at _getnewvnode+0x41
	_getdevvp(100,f817b8f4,3,f7bfff80,f8106e1e) at _getdevvp+0x28
	_bdevvp(100,f817b8f4) at _bdevvp+0x12
	_main(f7bfff8c) at _main+0x286
	db>

I had to type the above in manually but hopefully I didn't make any
transcription errors.

A couple of other things: First, the 386 PC was successfully running an earlier
(circa Feb 94) version of NetBSD-current.  I had just "upgraded" it to a newer
current by rdisting appropriate files from a more up to date machine when I
discovered the newer kernel would not boot :-( Hence my attempts to boot from a
floppy.  Secondly, I don't know why the floppy kernel is complaining about
there being no disk label, since there definitely is one (I have confirmed that
by booting with the original 0.9 install disks, breaking out of the install
procedure and running "disklabel -r wd0".

Chris Demetriou replied to Bernd:

> I finally am back into a position where i can test kernels, etc.,
> and i found a similar problem when booting kernels with NFSCLIENT
> but not NFSSERVER defined.

The kernel I am booting with has both defined.  I'll be happy to send a copy
of the config file to anyone who is interested.

Any suggestions as to what could be different with the 386 that causes this
problem will be gratefully received...

Duncan.

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