Leo Weppelman wrote:

> As you probably know, Waldi has made the bootblocks for NetBSD/Atari. The
> binaries to install and use them are in the archive. It's really quite
> nice to type 'reboot' and to get back into NetBSD without any user
> intervention. It saves time too ;-)

Unfortunately, a couple of things are not yet documented, because they
hardly belong in installboot(8) and I couldn't think of a reasonable
alternative (read: I'm lazy).

But first of all, before installing on harddisk, try a floppy disk.
When you are going to install on harddisk, make a backup first, at
least the bootblock (the first 8KB) and if it's an AHDI partitioned
disk, also the AHDI rootsector.

The missing docs:
1) Keep the Alternate key pressed to abort the bootstrap (compatible
   with AHDI 3.0).
2) To prevent an automatic boot keep the *right* Shift key pressed
   (not for floppy bootstrap, which always does a manual boot).
3) Possible options in the boot menue are -a, -b and -d (compatible
   with loadbsd.ttp).
4) Valid OS-types are .netbsd (default), .linux, .asv and .tos
   (only one of them is *really* valid of course ;-) ).
5) It is not possible to install the bootstrap on sdX and then
   start another OS from sdY for all X > Y. This limitation is
   dictated by the loader in ROM.
6) The installboot utility automatically sets the boot preference
   in NVRAM to NetBSD (except for floppy install).
   [This one should definitely be mentioned in installboot(8).]
7) A utillity to change or reset the boot pref. in NVRAM is not
   yet available. For now, run "cat /dev/nvram >foo", edit foo
   with a binary editor (the second byte is the boot pref.),
   then "cat foo >/dev/nvram".

> This also caused the kernel version to bump from 1.1A to 1.1B .

Wich in turn causes installboot to refuse running on a -current
kernel. :-(


Regards,
Waldi