Subject: HowTo: debugging sysinst, and keyboard repeat rate in bochs
To: None <tech-install@NetBSD.org>
From: Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de>
List: tech-install
Date: 11/09/2004 22:05:29
Two gems that I think are worth sharing:


1) testing sysinst

I had to take a bunch of screenshots from sysinst recently, and Daniel 
DeKok pointed me at a very nice way to test sysinst: instead of booting it 
on a system, it's enough to use vnconfig(8) to prepare a harddisk-image, 
which can then be used in sysinst to install NetBSD on. The only gotcha is 
that sysinst needs to run as root for this.

Installation itself works fine from a local (mounted) filesystem, no 
surprises there. And afterwards, the harddisk image can even be booted in 
bochs. In bochs, it will abort on the first boot as it won't find 
/dev/vnd0a. Manually fixing /etc/fstab gets bochs going all the way.


2) keyboard repeat rate in bochs

When booting up NetBSD in bochs, one may experience unusable fast keyboard 
repeat rates in NetBSD, at the login prompt etc. This can be fixed by 
putting

 	pit: realtime=1

into the bochsrc file.


  - Hubert

-- 
NetBSD - Free AND Open!      (And of course secure, portable, yadda yadda)