Re: Looking for suggestions for small, low power machine

[Ken Hornstein <kenh%pobox.com@localhost>]

>On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 08:11:07AM +0300, Jukka Marin wrote:
>I got a 5501 box now - with zero documentation.  How do I make it boot from
>a CF card?  I installed NetBSD 5.1 on a CF, and did installboot but 5501 does
>not boot from the card ("No Boot device available, enter monitor.").

There is always some weirdness in terms of device geometry that the
Soekris BIOS uses versus what NetBSD might pick.  In my limited
experience that's the cause of problems like this.  Here's what my
disklabel looks like on my 5501:

# fdisk
Disk: /dev/rwd0d
NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 15880, heads: 16, sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 16007040

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 996, heads: 255, sectors/track: 63 (16065 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 17169973584592896

Partition table:
0: NetBSD (sysid 169)
    start 63, size 16006977 (7816 MB, Cyls 0-996/99/63), Active
1: <UNUSED>
2: <UNUSED>
3: <UNUSED>
Bootselector disabled.

Me, I end up using PXEboot and installing NetBSD from there.

--Ken