On Mon, 27 Jun 2005, Jason Thorpe wrote:
> Well, it's a little different from the other bootxx_* programs in that it 
> ONLY works on CD-ROM drives.
>
> That said, it's probably appropriate to call it bootxx_cd9660

Next issue is that it seems to ask for a root/boot device when following 
the instructions in 
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-install/2005/06/22/0013.html, which is 
inconvenient. I wonder if that can be worked around somehow?

What I've done for testing was (on -current):
  * cd /src/sys/arch/i386/stand/cdboot && make && cp obj/cdboot /tmp
  * cd /src/sys/distrib/i386/floppies/ramdisk-big/obj/work
  * mv /tmp/cdboot .
  * cp /src/sys/arch/i386/compile/obj/GENERIC/netbsd .
  * cp /src/obj/destdir/usr/mdec/boot .
  * mkisofs -o ../work.iso -J -r -no-boot-emul -b cdboot .
  * qemu -cdrom ../work.iso -boot d

What happened is:

 	boot device: <unknown>
 	root device:

After entering "cd0a" (and cd0b for dump, and "generic" for file system) 
here, it takes quite a while (~1 minute) to proceed - it's probably going 
through all the filesystem types supported, which are quite a few in 
GENERIC (maybe i should have taken an INSTALL kernel? :).

Next, it asks:

 	init path (default /sbin/init):

Pressing RETURN creates mfs /dev and then drops into sysinst.

So if we could get rid of these extra key presses, we could probably 
easily start shuffling src/distrib/i386 around (oh no wait, we need 
'makefs -t cd9660' with boot-support first!!! David? :)).

BTW I found another bug in cdboot: if you don't press RETURN at the loader 
printing its dots and just wait, it'll hang after 5 seconds, not boot. 
Ooops! :)


  - Hubert