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Re: Regarding the boot process.



Riza Dindir <riza.dindir%gmail.com@localhost> writes:

>> Riza Dindir <riza.dindir%gmail.com@localhost> writes:
>>
>> > I try to use NetBSD from a "HDD caddy" which i installed on my laptop
>> > in place of my DVD drive. When i try to boot the OS (NetBSD), it
>> > prints out a string "mem [0x000000-0x000001 0xaaaa-0xbbb ...]" and
>> > stops there. No boot menu, nothing.
>> >
>> > At what stage in the boot process is this string shown?
>>
>> That may be from the BIOS.
>>
>> What exactly are you doing when you "try to boot NetBSD"?
>
> I am choosing the HDD in the caddy, from the bios boot menu.

I am guessing this is wd1, or the second disk drive, from the BIOS point
of view?

>> Is there an internal HD and what's on it?
>
> The internal HDD has windows 10 on it. I do not want to loose that, in
> case i need to get back to windows, for video conferencing apps, etc
> that are not supported yet on NetBSD.

That makes sense - I am just trying to understand the overall layout as
the boot process has a lot of steps.

>> If you put a different OS on the HD and boot the same way, does it boot?
>
> I did not try putting a different OS on the HDD in the caddy.
>
> What i tried though is this. I have removed the internal HDD (that
> contains Win10) from the system and put the NetBSD disk in its place.
> This booted NetBSD.
>
> I also put the NetBSD disk into the caddy, but no internal HDD, NetBSD
> booted without problems.

I am guessing that with the windows disk removed, the NetBSD disk,
whether in the internal slot or the DVD slot is the first disk, from the
BIOS viewpoint?

> What i would like is to keep the internal disk, but have the system
> boot from the caddy.

Yes, that's a totally reasonable thing to want to do.

>> Does your laptop use UEFI or BIOS booting?
>
> I am using UEFI (no secure boot at the moment). The NetBSD disk also
> has the UEFI partition (128MB) that contains the bootx64.efi, and
> another *.efi file.
> The NetBSD disk has the root partition, the swap, partitions as well.

I have mostly (all?) older systems and am not that familiar with UEFI.
But in general with booting, the BIOS loads one thing, and that loads
the next thing, and so on, until the kernel is running.  Usually there
are schemes to pass information about which disk is the boot disk from
one stage to the next.  A lot can go wrong.

I am guessing that the information that the boot disk is the second HD
is getting lost somewhere along the way.

Did you create this netbsd HD by using the installer from CD/DVD?  Are
you using 9.2/amd64?  Something else?

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