On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 06:11:33AM -0500, Sam Carleton wrote:

[netbooting]
> Hum, this is an interesting approach.  When I tried to
> boot off the generic.fs, it did aquire an IP address from
> my dhcp server.  Is there documentation somewhere talking
> about how to do a install this way?
I think he meant booting the disk image via network instead loading it 
from floppy. 
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/
The machine requests its diskless boot parameters via bootp/dhcp and
then loads a image via tftp. 

Example /etc/bootptab:
--------------------------------
ibmrs6k:\
	ht=ethernet:\
	# target machine MAC address
	ha=08005ab24ae8:\
	# target machine IP address
	ip=192.168.1.100:\
	# File to load, you may use sysinst.fs at the start.
	bf=/tftpboot/generic.fs:\
	# NFS root path
	rp=/nfsroot/NetBSD/prep:\
	# boot server IP address
	sa=192.168.1.1:
--------------------------------
and in /tftpboot:
-r--r--r--    1 root     root      1449646 Oct 14  2002 generic.fs
-r--r--r--    1 root     root      1465946 Oct 14  2002 sysinst.fs

Make sure you enabled bootps and tftp in /etc/inetd.conf and restarted 
inetd.

You can run the machine completely diskless via NFS root. Look at the 
Diskless NetBSD HOW-TO how to do this.

> > Another way suggested to me was to slave my scsi disk
> > onto an existing OS, such as NetBSD, and
> > partition/format/install  from there (I have not tried
> > this, but the theory seems logical).  
> I had thought about this, but I am not 100% sure how to do
> it:)  If I where to stick the HD into a i386 machine,
> would I do a normal i386 install and then simply swap
> kernels?
How should this work? When you install i386 all executables will be i386 
code and not PowerPC. It is possible to write a ready to run disk image 
with an other machine on the disk and use the disk in the target machine.
E.g. you can dd(1) sysinst.fs to a disk, boot from it and install to this 
or an other disk.
-- 



tschüß,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/