hi,

On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, Tony Houghton wrote:

> I'm trying to install RiscBSD (partially from the Risc Disc 3), but I've
> got problems.
> 
> Firts of all, when attempting to boot from !BtRiscBSD all the text was
> badly corrupted. I found it worked using the default mode of 1024x768 at
> 60Hz instead of trying to use my usual 800x600x256 at 75Hz (which wasn't
> the resolution it was actually using BTW, I could tell from the size of
> the display), but it isn't comfortable to read on a 14/15" monitor.

have you tried 800x600x256 at 70 hz ?

> Now the problem I'm having is that it "can't mount root". It gets as far
> as saying:
> 
>   swap dev 1001 wd0: no disk label
>   -> device not configured for swap

This happens when you've not got a swap space, this is made when you get
into riscbsd.  You'll see something similair when you boot into
multi-user mode without a copy of the kernel in /netbsd.

> followed by a sort of hex dump with lots of tags beginning spl. Then it
> says:
> 
>   md0: allocated 0K (0 blocks)
>   panic: cannot mount root
>   Stopped at 0xf0117d04 : ldmdb r11, {r11, r13, r15}
> 
> I thought the bit about "device not configured for swap" was a bit
> strange seeing as the BtRiscBSD option implied I was configuring it for
> swap.
>
> The trace command produced:
> 
>   ?(0xf0117d04)
>   ?(0xf001f988)
>   ?(0xf000fe80)
>   ?(0xf000005c)

probably runs back through the panic tree.
 
> My hard drive is a Seagate, about 2GB. It has a sector size of 512, 16
> heads and 63 sectors per track. I've allocated 1200MB (2457 cylinders)
> to ADFS with a LFAU of 4K, and the rest to RiscBSD - at least that was
> the idea.
> 
> I've got a StrongARM with 26MB and nothing very exotic in my boot
> sequence, but I am using Acorn's ROM patches 2.02. I'm using BtRiscBSD
> 2.87, StrongARM kernel 4958, and INST_12/FS.

Try using an earlier kernel, one that still uses rd for ram disc, not md
for memory disc.  Use it to boot up and setup your hard disc, then you can
use the later kernels.  Note that using an earlier kernel might mean that
you can't halt/reboot, you'll get the shutdown counter reach 1 and it
won't reset, this is fixed now though.

You might want to download btriscbsd 2.88 as well if using a newer kernel,
it's got a nicer interface to unixfs.

> Is there any way of getting back to RISC OS from the db prompt without
> resetting?

'call boot0' works, but I think there's a call that you can sync the disks
with, not that it matters as you've not booted

> PS the BETA/TXT installation guide supplied with the Risc Disc didn't
> seem very good, so I downloaded the newer installation guide, which
> is much more thorough. It went a bit funny when un-gzip-ing with SparkFS
> and most of the appendixes seem to be missing. Has anyone else had this
> problem?

I'll download it and have a look.

Chris G