Re: Filesystem problems and init.root

[Brendon Costa <bcosta%avdat.com.au@localhost>]

I have narrowed down the problem a bit more.

The issue *may* have something to do with compressed vnd devices, or the
drivers for accessing the serial port on a particular platform.
Basically it works fine if i use a disk image that is not compressed.
I.e. I have tried the following two sequences:

This sequence fails:
mount -r /dev/sd0e /mnt/flash
vnconfig -crvz vnd3 /mnt/flash/full.imz
mount -r /dev/vnd3a /mnt/root

Then at some point when performing operations reading from the /mnt/root
filesystem, i get an "Input/output error" from whatever application i
use. It does not happen immediately but after it occurs the first time
it fails consistently from then on. Just an example:

cd /mnt/root/dev/
cat <MAKEDEV
would return "stdin: IO Error" (or something similar).

Now if i do the following instead:
mount -r /dev/sd0e /mnt/flash
vnconfig -crv vnd3 /mnt/flash/full.img
mount -r /dev/vnd3a /mnt/root

One important distinction is that i could not reproduce this on a
different PC running NetBSD 4.0 (It occurs on a PC104 form factor i386
box for an embedded system). I am yet to try the same cut-down kernel on
the other PC, but was unable to reproduce the result with a purely
GENERIC kernel on a different PC. If i get time to debug this further i
will post more information. For now it is sufficient for me that the
non-compressed image works. I don't have a lot of time to test other
configurations at the moment.

If anyone is interested in can provide more information like the kernel
config and a dmesg listing if that will help.

Thanks,
Brendon.