Re: Making a partition bootable (SS10)

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>>>> Another approach is to make a separate / partition, and then swap
>>>> and /usr.
>> Or a separate boot partition, with / elsewhere, typically with a
>> kernel configured "config root on" the actual / partition.
> so do I need to configure things specially?

If you want to go that way, yes.

I'll address that more in a response to another list mail.

> I have:
> sd0a : boot
> sd0b : swap
> sd0c : "disk"
> sd0d : /

> I run installboot onto rds0a (although I think it is similar to rsd0c
> I suppose, being the first)

If sd0a's offset is zero, yes, you can tell installboot to use either
(r)sd0a or (r)sd0c.  More generally, you can tell installboot to use
any partition that (a) begins at the same place as, and (b) is at least
as large as, the boot filesystem.

> the kernel "boots" but then stops with:

> warning: no /dev/console
> exec /sbin/error 2
> init: trying /sbin/oinit

> and a load of other errors up to a panic.

This is exactly what I'd expect: the kernel tries to mount its boot
partition as / and explodes badly because there isn't anything but boot
material there.  I've seen it myself often enough when doing the
"separate boot and root" thing when I don't yet have a kernel
configured with root on sd0d built for the machine yet.

> Is it that now the kernel is trying to boot from "sd0a" as root,
> while I want it to use sd0d ?

Yes.  (Well, almost certainly.  I might be able to come up with some
alternative explanation if I tried; the only one that comes to mind
immediately is that the filesystem is so badly damaged that
/dev/console and /sbin/init aren't available.  On a fresh install this
is relatively implausible, while the explanation you cite is not the
least bit implausible.)

> How do I achieve this?  you mention configure root.  How?

There are at least two ways.  Since you said you're using 4.*, there's
a third also.

The first one is to boot with -a.  If you do this, you will be (well,
should be) prompted to specify the root device.

The second is to configure and build a kernel with root explicitly
specified rather than defaulted.  To quote from one of my own kernel
configs,

config netbsd root on sd0d type ffs

The third works only if you have RAIDframe available, which 4.* does.
This is to set up a RAID volume - most likely a RAID 1 with only one
member - that is set to autoconfigure as root.  This will then preempt
the default choice of the boot partition as root.

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