Ok,

I finally figured out why I couldn't get my Cobalt to boot from
the ext2fs partition that I had "created" by getting an image from
a different machine.

It turns out that the firmware doesn't support some of the fancier
ext2fs stuff that is "default" on some newish installations. Using the
'e2fsprogs' package, particularly 'dumpe2fs' I was able to find
this problem.

From a non-working filesystem:
Filesystem volume name:   <none>
Last mounted on:          <not available>
Filesystem UUID:          7818bd99-ae0e-4c33-b0de-7efe0362e12b
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features:      filetype sparse_super
Filesystem state:         clean

From a bootable filesystem:
Filesystem volume name:   <none>
Last mounted on:          <not available>
Filesystem UUID:          15e8e346-9ad1-11d3-8244-0010e0006904
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    0 (original)
Filesystem features:     (none)
Filesystem state:         clean

So, it looks like the revision number and features are the problem.
This can be fixed by just altering the commandline to 'mke2fs' a bit:
	mke2fs -r 0 -O none /dev/wd0e

As a result, my /stand is only about 20MB and I was able to use 
fdisk/disklabel/newfsmke2fs via a netboot environment.  So the Cobalt port
can be self-supporting now, no Linux box needed. :-)

I think it would be a very cool idea to ship a 20MB image that can be
uncompressed and dd'ed to the drive.  This image could have the partition
table and a linux partition.  By putting the sysinst kernel in the image
it should be possible to netboot, dd, then reboot the cobalt from the 
local disk and complete the install.  Much easier to recover as well!

Most people will probably want to resize the initial Linux partition on
their Cobalt, so having a nice small image available would probably be
idea for them also.

-Andrew