John Mitchell <john@cepros.com> wrote:
>    I have been successful at booting NetBSD on my Jornada 820 up to
> mounting a root filesystem. Since there is not support for the PCMCIA slo=
t
> or the CF slot yet I need a root filesystem to run from RAM, but I have n=
o
> idea how to create something like this. Can someone give me some pointers=
?

Use vnconfig to create a RAM disk. I did in from a NetBSD/i386 machine
and I used files from basesrc.tgz of the cats port (another arm port
that has a recent snapshot). I have not been able to actually use my
memory disk root because it's too big (see other port).

dd if=3D/dev/zero of=3D/tmp/ramdisk.fs bs=3D1k count=3D1024
vnconfig /dev/vnd0d /tmp/ramdisk.fs=20
disklabel -I -e /dev/vnd0
newfs /dev/vnd0a
mount /dev/vnd0a /mnt
cd /mnt
... copy whatever you want here
cd /
umount /mnt
vnconfig -u /dev/vnd0d

And you have your miniroot.

> Is there a pre-built animal out there? I have a PC running Mandrake 8.2
> will I need to load NetBSD on it as well?

I think the above technique can be used on another system provided it
has disk like access to file =E0 la vnd. The commands to do the job might
be different mut you should be able to make it.

If you cannot do the vnd trick, then you can always create a real disk
partition of a few megabytes, format it and install the binaries, and
then copy it to a file using dd.

>     Okay, last question. I want to become a kernel hacker, but have no
> idea what to do to start.

Read "design and implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System", Mc
Kusik and all.

--=20
Emmanuel Dreyfus.
Sryvpvgngvbaf!
Ibhf irarm qr creqer ibger grzcf n qrpbqre har fvtangher fnaf vagrerg.
manu@netbsd.org