Subject: My uVAX 2 won't boot of its rd54.
To: None <port-vax@NetBSD.ORG>
From: None <cjn@isd.se>
List: port-vax
Date: 07/29/1996 08:25:53
Help!!! 

I asked around a bit latley about how to get serial console output 
from a VS 2, so I removed the video card and moved around the rest of 
the cards. I now had a VT320 connected as console and it worked 
nicely. I then connected a Intel machine running Linux to my network 
and moved the NetBSD tarfiles and bootimages over to uVAX 2 that runs 
Ultrix. I dd:ed the bootimages to tk50 tapes and tried to boot the 
VS. It boots of MUA0 and I get the Nboot prompt, i ran edlabel on 
ra(0,1), ra(0,0,1) and ra (0,0,0,1) but nothing seems to work, it 
reads the tape, initialises the filesystem and then i reboot again 
from tape but the only thing it ever responds when i try to boot with 
:ra(0,1)gennetbsd or :ra(0,0,1)gennetbsd or :ra(0,0,0,1)gennetbsd is 
something like "file or directory not found". I also tried to boot 
with other kernel names, actually I tried to boot it with almost 
every %-#&/- string that I got out of the miniroot image using 
"strings". There is nothing wrong with the disk, It used to be 
installed with VMS and be located in a VS2000 machine. 
I have booted the kernel twice from tape with the command
:tms(0,1)/netbsd and don't ask me how I got the idea of trying it, 
but it got a panic as soon as it tried to mount the root "ra0b". ra0* 
as it read in the INSTALL file on the archive didn't work at all. Im 
trying to run the latest snapshot, should I consider trying the 1.1?

I really *WANT* to run this code on my machines, but maybe murphy 
won't allow me to?

I also really *NEED* to run it, cause otherwise I will have no way of 
getting enough diskspace to hold the distribution so I can ftp or nfs 
it to our 750 under VMS, write tu58:s boot it, install it mount a 
RL02 write a image and boot our 8600. I really must get it up and 
running soon, its been dead since the root RA81 broke down six months 
ago, and we understood that no backups had been made since we 
installed 4.3 reno about three years or something ago, The distrubution 
tapes for 4.3 where of course also lost just to make things worse.

/Greets Christian