On Sun, 14 May 2006, matthew sporleder wrote:
> After I created my crunchgen image and mdsetimage-ed it into my
> kernel, how do I boot it?
>
> I included /boot in my list and ran installboot, but Qemu can't boot
> it as a floppy image.  Any tips?  Maybe this isn't the best way to
> test an image, since I don't really have anything called 'netbsd'?

Please see http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-install/2006/05/11/0001.html 
for all the details of how this stuff works. Basically, crunchgen is onl 
used to compile a few programs into 1 binary that switches behaviour based 
on argv[0], similar to what busybox on linux does.

That binary (or any other files) are then put onto a filesystem image, 
e.g. in FFS format.

And THAT filesystem image is then inserted into the kernel, where it will 
serve as the too filesystem once your kernel is booted.

What you do with the resulting kernel depends on your environment, but I 
can assure you that Qemu cannot boot a kernel directly. You have to wrap 
it into something that can be booted, e.g. a floppy image in ustarfs 
format and with a proper bootblock, or a ISO image, again with proper boot 
code. You can also use PXE to netboot your kernel directly, but Qemu 
doesn't support booting from PXE AFAIK.


  - Hubert