Subject: Sparc 5 install won't
To: NetBSD-help list <netbsd-help@netbsd.org>
From: The Old Bear <oldbear@arctos.com>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 05/10/2003 14:47:02
Help!

The system is a Sparc 5 with 64MB memory, two 1GB disks, a floppy drive,
no CD-ROM drive, and running headless with a ANSI terminal (emulated on
another machine) connected to Serial Port A as console.

I am attempting to install NetBSD and have downloaded the two boot
floppy files onto a W*nd*ws machine, gunzipped disk 1, used rawrite to
copy images to two floppies.  I was then able to boot the Sparc from
the first floppy and continue to the second floppy.  I let it do its
own partitioning of disk sd0 as follows:

     Size      Offset    End       FStype Bsize Fsize Preserve Mount point
     --------- --------- --------- ------ ----- ----- -------- -----------
  a: 66        0         65        4.2BSD 8192  1024  No       /
  b: 522       66        587       swap
  c: 2036      0         2035      unused
  g: 1448      588       2035      4.2BSD 8192  1024  No       /usr


I then opted to let it download the NetBSD distribution files using ftp
which it appeared to do without problem.  It then uncompressed them and
moved onto the actual installation:

      Status: Running
     Command: pax -zrpe -f /mnt/usr/INSTALL/base.tgz
     -------------------------------------------------------------------
      Status: Running
     Command: pax -zrpe -f /mnt/usr/INSTALL/comp.tgz
     -------------------------------------------------------------------
and so forth.

It concluded with its prompting me to select a time zone and a password
encryption scheme and gave me the option of not setting a root password at
this time.

But the system then announced:

     The completed new root filesystem failed a basic sanity check.
     Are you sure you installed all the required sets?

                            +-----------------------+
                            | Hit enter to continue |
                            |                       |
                            |>a: ok                 |
                            +-----------------------+

The only apparent choice is "a: ok" which produces the following:

     The installation of NetBSD-1.6 is now complete.  The system should
     boot from hard disk.  Follow the instructions in the INSTALL
     document about final configuration of your system.

     At a minimum, you should edit /etc/rc.conf to match your needs.
     See /etc/defaults/rc.conf for the default values.


Unfortunately, the system will NOT boot from sd0.  I can restart it by
booting from the first installation floppy and break out to the # prompt.
 From there I can poke around a rudimentary file system but I am not sure
whether this is on sd0, on the floppy, or only in memory as part of the
first installation floppy having been run as a boot diskette.

Prior to attempting this installation, the Sparc was booting from sd0
into Redhat linux but I did not have the root password, and rather than
recover it, I decided that NetBSD would be more interesting on this
vintage machine.

What now?

Regards,
Will
The Old Bear