Subject: Re: Help with dd'ing alpha port
To: None <mgrommet@insolwwb.net>
From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
List: port-alpha
Date: 05/22/1997 13:05:46
On Wed, 21 May 1997 09:47:28 +0000
"Mike Grommet" <mgrommet@ns.insolwwb.net> wrote:
> I have hooked the drive up to a freebsd system
> in order to dd the distribution files to the drive. I've been running
> freebsd and BSDI for quite a bit but have never had to do this
> before...
...well, hopefully the NetBSD/alpha installation procedure will see some
improvement soon... esp. now that we can install NetBSD/alpha boot blocks
onto CD-ROMs.
> I tried to dd the file RZ_25IMA (the rz_25 image file) to the disk by
> doing this: dd if=RZ_25IMA of=/dev/sd1
>
> and it gives me an error mesg:
>
> sd1: invalid primary partition table: no magic
>
>
> What am I missing here?
Looks like you've discovered a neat little "feature" in FreeBSD. They
sort of require that disks have a DOS MBR partition table on the disk
to define the disk's "slices". You'll probably need to fdisk (or whatever
the FreeBSD equivalent is) the disk to define the MBR... although I
don't know what NetBSD/alpha is going to think of that :-)
Do you have another system from which to dd the image? Alternatively,
any FreeBSD folks who might read this know how to work around this lossage?
Jason R. Thorpe thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center Home: 408.866.1912
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Moffett Field, CA 94035 Pager: 415.428.6939