Re: install on PowerBook - no root partition defined

[Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost>]

On Wed, Oct 04, 2023 at 11:39:44AM +0200, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> NetBSD 9.3 macppc (verified the name of the ISO I burned).
> 
> Does the installer look for the fstab inside the created wd0a partition? or
> does it look for a specific parition, e.g. wd0b?

I think there were bugs - try to manually mount wd0a on /targetroot,
then unmount it, and then try the reinstall step.

I dimly recall it looks for the "last mounted on" information and expects
"/" (which would be the case if you are actually upgrading or had booted
that setup already), but also accepts /targetroot (which is where the
installer would mount it temporarily while extracting the sets).

> Not related with this issue, but to the bootloader in general: do I need to
> have a small HFS or FAT partition to hold ofwboot.xcf in the final setup?
> Rethinking, I probably do. It is not that well explained in the
> documentation, but can be inferred.

Yes, you probably will need that (or a separate disk, which also may be
a SD card in a converter).

But there are rumored setups with only NetBSD on disk where others have
found ways to load ofwboot.elf directly via bootxx w/o apple partition
map. Closest thing to that I personally used: a disk with just MBR
and FAT partition to hold ofwboot.elf (or .xcf), plus a NetBSD partition
(ffs) to hold the kernel:

# fdisk wd1
[..]
Partition table:
0: Primary 'big' DOS, 16-bit FAT (> 32MB) (sysid 6)
    start 16, size 257040 (126 MB, Cyls 0/0/17-16/0/16)
1: NetBSD (sysid 169)
    start 257056, size 234184592 (114348 MB, Cyls 16/0/17-14593/80/63)
        PBR is not bootable: All bytes are identical (0x00)
2: <UNUSED>
3: <UNUSED>
No active partition.
Drive serial number: 0 (0x00000000)

I have the full /rescue/* on that NetBSD partition plus the kernel, which
has a hard wired root on another disk (on a controller OFW does not know
about).

.. but I shouldn't degress and confuse you here, sorry.

Martin