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> From: Adrian_Roseboom@hud.gov
>   So... if my labels are OK but all I need to do is newfs my disk, I can do 
>   this on a PC based *nix system?  It would be oh so easy for me to pop the 
>   drive in and do a CD based boot of Redhat at work (just runs off the CD 
>   and boot disks).  Then I should be able to newfs the sucker and go from 
>   there.  I can tapeboot just fine at home but that doesn't include newfs 
Wait a minute!  If you can tapeboot, why are you trying to initialize 
the disk on some other machine?  If you follow the directions in the 
release notes, you will be able to newfs the disk as soon as you have 
booted the miniroot.
***************
  being new to SCSI as well as SUN3's I misunderstood a few things.  I had 
  asked a couple of weeks ago about an error I was getting.  I was booting 
  from the tape media just fine.  I had figured out how to label my disk 
  and that seemed to be OK.  When I tried DD i was getting an error 
  message:

st0(si0:4:0):no data found, requested size:64(decimal) data=00 00 00 0+0 records
in
0+0 records out

  A bunch of people responded that, while I had partitioned the drive, I 
  needed to create a file system on it with newfs in order to dd to it.  
  Only at that point do I have the miniroot installed.
  
  Basically, I created the tape media, booted the Sun3 from tape, used 
  disklabel, and now I need to install the miniroot.  I know there were 
  ibs/obs problems from the various posts in the archive and I tried to 
  trudge my way through them but I always get that same error (or a slight 
  variation).  I followed the instructions and used md -f $T weof (that's 
  from memory, but I had the sheet when I did it ;) and fiddled with the bs 
  counts.
  
  My only other option seems to be netbooting but I don't have the disk 
  space on my PC for a permanent *nix installation.  At this point I'm not 
  sure that would solve my problem either.
  
  BTW: I also have a Sun386i which despises this particular SCSI drive (a 
  cheapo/old IBM SCSI 1) and refuses to talk to it at all.  I can't netboot 
  from THAT machine due to other problems I fiddled with for a couple 
  weeks.
  
  do you need to have your partition newfs'd in order to dd the miniroot to 
  it?  or is labeling it enough and I'm suffering from disk 
  incompatibility?  I know the drive works on PC's as I probed it from 
  there when the 386i refused to have anything to do with it, spitting out 
  the cryptic error message:'1' ;)
  
  -Adrian