On Nov 13, 2004, at 12:04 PM, Jochen Kunz wrote:

> The current boot loaders can not switch boot devices during boot. I.e.
> if you loaded the bootloader via network, you have to load the kernel
> via network too.

Oh well.  I guess I was figuring it was like the hp300 bootloader which 
can do that.

> containing the bootloader as first file and the kernel as second. For
> booting from disk you have to install sdboot with "disklabel -B" and
> "boot" should be copied to "/boot.hp700".

Ah, that only works once I have my system running NetBSD.  Too bad 
installboot doesn't work, since that can be run from another NetBSD 
platform.

> Unfortunately there is an evil kernel bug that prevents booting from
> disk to work. You will be able to load a kenel from disk, but it will
> get trouble accessing the disk later when it wants to mount "/".

OK, so what you're saying is that even if I got NetBSD onto a had 
drive, it wouldn't run from it, so I'd need to use an nfs root 
filesystem.  And since when I netboot a kernel it doesn't find the nfs 
root, I'd need to have a root filesystem on disk, which doesn't work.

That kinda makes it difficult for me to try playing with this platform 
:(

So, how exactly do you have your setup running?  Or is it simply an 
ethernet issue with iee?

>> Also, it might be handy to also run:
>> nbhp700-mkboot -v /export/gecko/root/usr/mdec/boot netboot.lif
> This is of no use. All you can do with this is to load the boot loader
> itself. You will not be able to load any kernel with this LIF file.

OK, like I said, I thought it was like the hp300 bootloader.  
Nevertheless, build.sh release ought to bundle up the GENERIC kernel 
into a netbootable format, so first-time users don't need to install 
all the source code and cross-compile a toolchain just to get 
nbhp700-mkboot.

TIA,
   -- MW