On Sat, 10 Nov 2001, sgimips NetBSD list wrote:
> I've succeeded in creating a recipe for a bootable CDrom image
> for NetBSD/sgimips.  I'm working on an image that will help
> kickstart installations for those who prefer this over a
> netboot/NFS installation.  Is there immediate interest in such
> effort now, or shall I develop this off-list?

Sounds interresting.


> So far, I've created a 100mb bootable miniroot filesystem
> (no /usr) and am going to populate it with the RELEASE .tgz's
> necessary to fully install.  I've never worked on development
> of a NetBSD installation system, so all recommendations would
> be appreciated.

Other ports (sparc, ...) have the concept of a "miniroot", which is a
small filesystem image that can be dd(1)'d e.g. to the swap partition
after the system was netbooted (or from the native host operating system),
and then be booted. See src/distrib/*/miniroot (and accompanying
dirs!) for related sources. 

I don't know how sparc bootable CDs are made, if they use the miniroot to
boot from CD, or something else.  I think some code (that I've never
used!) for CD-creation is in src/distrib/cdrom. 

If you could make the bootable sgimips CD image a part of that scheme,
that'd be most excellent!


> I have found a few glitches in the kernel while going through
> this process, namely incorrect bdev and cdev numbers for the
> vnd device, a SCSI initialisation problem on reboots, and an
> obscure hang with some kind of cache error.  I'll post specifics
> on what I find later.  Should I send-pr such things instead?

Dunno... i guess send-pr'ing diffs is a good thing, and if you send a
notice about the PR to this list it can't hurt.


 - Hubert

-- 
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