Subject: Re: Boot floppy
To: J. Heinrich <lists+netbsd@y.ml.org>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: port-sparc
Date: 06/23/1999 18:46:06
> I'm now at the point where I can fish or cut bait.  This is the only
> Sparc that I have access to at the moment, so I want to make sure
> that I have everything I might need before proceeding and overwriting
> the existing Solaris installation (which I don't have media for),
> thereby losing the ability to write floppies.

Then don't.  Unless you're so short of disk space that you haven't room
for NetBSD and Solaris to coexist on your drive, you don't need to
destroy Solaris to get a NetBSD install in place.

Most briefly, pick some space, make a partition for it, unpack NetBSD
into it, then either have the Sun bootloader boot a "kernel" called
/boot from the new partition, or compile the NetBSD installboot for
Solaris to install bootblocks.  (The latter is not out of the question;
I did this with the NetBSD/sun3 installboot on NetBSD/sparc.)

None of this requires rendering the disk unbootable wrt Solaris.

I'll be glad to correspond further about this privately, if you want to
try to go this route.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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