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Re: Xen boot strangeness (Was: Re: [SOLVED] Re: Xen 4.18.5_20250521nb0 not ELF binary (Was: Re: EFI and Xen))



At Fri, 30 May 2025 22:26:48 -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski <frchuckz%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
Subject: Re: Xen boot strangeness (Was: Re: [SOLVED] Re: Xen 4.18.5_20250521nb0 not ELF binary (Was: Re: EFI and Xen))
>
> I am sure setting bootdev=hd2d will not work. Those are names of
> devices the bootloader understands, not the NetBSD kernel.

I was thinking the same thing after I posted....

(Which is yet another example of the legacy of bizarre PC magic....)

One of my systems with all GPT partitions doesn't show any "hdNa" names
for known disks:

hw.disknames = cd0 sd0 dk0 dk1 dk2 dk3 dk4 sd1 sd2 cd1 sd3 data-build scratch-scratch vg0-nbtest.root vg0-nbtest.swap vg0-nbtest.var vg0-nbtest.pkg vg0-tinytest vg0-nb10.root vg0-nb10.swap vg0-nb10.var vg0-nb10.pkg vg0-nbday.root vg0-nbday.var vg0-nbday.pkg vg0-nbday.swap vg0-fezzik.0 vg0-fezzik.1

> > Chuck if you have a plain label (not just UUID) on your root partition,
> > maybe you could try:
> >
> > menu=Boot normally with Xen:dev NAME=rootlabel;load /netbsd-XEN3_DOM0.gz -c console=xencons bootdev=wedge:rootlabel;multiboot /xen.gz dom0_mem=2G dom0_max_vcpus=4 com1=9600,8n1,0x40c0,16,1:0.0 console=com1 cet=no-ibt pv-l1tf=false
>
> I am not sure if it is easy to replace a plain label on a wedge with
> a label. I am surprised the NAME=... form of specifying bootdev did
> not work. I may have mis-typed or mis-copied the UUID, I don't know.

It shouldn't be a problem to add a name label to any GPT partition.

	gpt -v label -i 1 -l rootlabel /dev/wd2d

(I'm not sure the "1" is correct there for your system, or even the
"wd2" -- you need to use "gpt show wd2" (or whatever the disk is) to get
the actual index number of the partition.)

I use just "/" as the label for the root device, as then in /etc/fstab I
can mount it with:

	NAME=/	/	ffs	rw,log	1 1

> I think that code to search for the boot device when the actual
> root partition, whether it was wd0a or wd0e or whatever is given
> to the kernel from boot.cfg is not useless in the legacy case.
>[[....]]
> So that code is *not* useless on systems using a NetBSD disklabel.

In the plain legacy BIOS system case for GENERIC kernels it is of course
useful.

However for any system running a XEN_DOM0 kernel, including a legacy
system, it is unnecessary and confusing.

Note that getting rid of it from the XEN_DOM0 kernel could entail
needing to add support for a "dumpdev=" kernel command-line option,
though that would be secondary if there were support to configure a dump
device after boot.  FreeBSD has had a dumpon(8) utility since 2.0.5.

--
					Greg A. Woods <gwoods%acm.org@localhost>

Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <woods%robohack.ca@localhost>
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