rquinn+11121@sec.sprint.net (Rob Quinn) writes:
>  Same here. I think a custom kernel (without the root on memory disk stuff)
> would have fixed this, but instead I just made a boot floppy holding my CD's
> gzipped "root on cd0" kernel. It would be nice if the boot program allowed
> "cd0a:", in case I ever get a kernel that can't fit on a floppy.

This is my understanding on the matter: The bios doesn't know about
CD's.  The hack to boot from a CD is done by pretending that one file
on the CD is a floppy (1.4M, or 2M).  Since the netbsd boot-code also
uses the bios to boot the kernel, there is no way it will ever see a
"cd0" that isn't a floppy.  One is stuck putting the kernel on the
phony "floppy-on-cdrom" file.

> Same here. I think a custom kernel (without the root on memory disk stuff)
> would have fixed this, but instead I just made a boot floppy holding my CD's
> gzipped "root on cd0" kernel. It would be nice if the boot program allowed
> "cd0a:", in case I ever get a kernel that can't fit on a floppy.

My root line was: 
        config         netbsd  root on cd0a type cd9660

Upon booting, the kernel still forced my to hit <cr> a number of
times.  I don't know why it didn't boot up without the pesky ("'Wadda
I do now?") questions.  (This was a while ago, so things may have
changed by now.)

>  That's what I'm doing for /tmp and /var/tmp. I'm thinking of changing /var/tmp
> to be a symlink to /tmp/var.tmp/ so I can have just one mount. 

Similarly, I have /var/tmp symlinked to /tmp (ever since running Sunos
4.03 (??)).  The system booted quite nicely with /tmp being an mfs and
all the other tmps symlinked to it.

As you also noticed boot was quite noisy with lots of things failing
due to a non-writable rootfs.

>  The worst problem I've found so far is that the date resets to 1 Jan 1970.

I used my normal rootfs (modified as little as possible) for the
rescue CD.  That saved me by doing an ntpdate.

-wolfgang
-- 
       Wolfgang Rupprecht <wolfgang+gnus@dailyplanet.wsrcc.com>
		    http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/
Coming soon: GPS mapping tools for Open Systems. http://www.gnomad-mapping.com/