Excerpts from internet.computing.netbsd.port-pmax: 7-Oct-97 miniroot by
Jonathan Stone@DSG.Stanf 
> There already is a 32Mbyte diskimage. It can be dd'ed directly onto
> the `whole disk' partition of a disk and booted.  That's the
> `diskimage' I referred to in the message you quote.
>  
> I'm not sure what you are asking for here, that the diskimage does not
> provide. Is there something missing from the diskimage?

    Well, at least for me the diskimage seemed to be missing all of
/usr.  Which seemed to limit the install method to NFS, and even at that
it was difficult, since ftp, tar, and such were all in /usr/bin.  Even
after I got
a disk larger than my 31MB to put the diskimage on it was unable to get
any use out of the diskimage.

> >And there may be people who only have 2100s or 3100s which cannot boot
> >properly from network.
>  
> There is a stripped-down kernel which is under 800K which successfully
> net-boots on 2100s and 3100s with old PROMs.  This has been part of
> snapshots for something like a year (from memory, I'd have to check
> the exact dates).  Frankly, I am confused. Where did you hear that
> NetBSD doesn't netboot on 2100s or 3100s?  Is the Web page not clear,
> or is this misinformation from elsewhere, or what?

    I've had some real troubles getting my 3100 to netboot.  I could
never get it to connect to the mopd on my i386 box, and tftp would only
work every 3rd or 4th time, other times it would complain about ARP or
not being able to find the file errors.  I did finally manage to get it
to boot, though, and just booted with the snapshot completely untarred
on my i386 box, and disklabelled and copied that install over to the
DEC.  Took the better part of a day between swapping drives around and
hassling with that, then trying to set up the mop / tftp servers, then
getting the DEC to want to boot off the network.  And it was only luck
that I hadn't given up before the 4th try of the tftp boot....  =)

    An image that was 24MB or so and would have maybe all of / and
enough of /usr (but statically linked or something) to be able to
support a modified install script would be really nice, IMHO.  Of course
hopefully I'll never have to reinstall NetBSD on my 3100 again...  =)

    BTW, while I'm posting, can anybody give me some pointers on how
(if) I can cross-compile for NetBSD/pmax from NetBSD/i386?  I guess the
binutils support NetBSD/pmax shared libs and all?  I'd really appreciate
some pointers, I've never done cross-compiling before, and I've been
under the impression that it takes some hacking to get NetBSD/pmax to
compile for pmax, so I'd imagine it's even more difficult on i386?  Is
it possible at all?

    Thanks in advance.

                                                          Will Ferry

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