On Thu, 7 Oct 1999, Ray Phillips wrote:

> I've probably missed something simple, but I've reached a dead end when
> trying to install NetBSD/macppc onto a G4 Macintosh.  Could someone help
> please?
> 
> So far, at least, the problem isn't incompatible software but a practical
> one.  The G4 doesn't have a floppy disk drive so I can't use the floppy
> disk I made from the NetBSD distribution's boot.fs image file to boot the
> machine.
> 
> I have net-booted the G4 from an Alpha which is running NetBSD but I can't
> find the sysinst program anywhere and I need it to install NetBSD onto the
> G4's internal hard drive.
> 
> sysinst must be on the floppy disk I've created from the boot.fs image file
> but I can't get to it.  I guess I could get it off the floppy by booting a
> suitable Power Mac from it and ftp'ing sysinst to one of the nfs
> directories on my Alpha machine, but I don't have such a Power Mac.

I don't think it's that hard. Assuming you have FFS_EI and the vnd driver
compiled into your Alpha, you can do it with the Alpha. The vnd driver
lets you treat a file as a disk. So you can make a disk device whose
contents are those of the boot.fs file.

For instance, I downloaded one of the old boot floppies, and typed (as
root):

vnconfig -t floppy /dev/vnd0c boot.fs

[it would be vnd0d on i386]

Now vnd0 is a device whose contents are given by the boot.fs file and it
has a geometry from the "floppy" entry in /etc/disktab.

Now if I had FFS_EI compiled into my kernel, I could type

mount /dev/vnd0c /some/mount/point and the filesystem'd show up. As I
don't all I can do is fsck it to see it's ok. :-)

Take care,

Bill