Hi,

I'm trying to install NetBSD 1.1 on an HP 400.

Part of my problem is that I'm kind of new to system instillation,
but I'm not going to let that stop me.  (:

I've set up the rbootd on another HP 400 running NetBSD 1.0A.
(This machine was set up by someone who is now unavailable)
The instructions are unclear when it comes to making a disk label.
I eventually figured out what I needed to type in order to tell it what kind
of disk I had and filled in what I think are correct values for the drive.
I made an uninformed guess of what the partitions should look like, down loaded
the miniroot image, and tried to boot.  After it recognizes the display, it
states:

WARNING: using device at unit 0 of controller
Changing root device to sd0b
panic: cannot mount root
Stopped at      _Debugger+0x6:  unlink    a6
db>

Probably this is a misconfiguration of the partitions on my part, but I
don't know enough to know how to fix it.

If you've read this far, then maybe I can convince you to read farther.
According to a /etc/disktab entry:

##################################################################
#  DISK GEOMETRY AND PARTITION LAYOUT TABLES.                    #
#  Key:                                                          #
#       (Leading field is name -- can be any string)             #
#       ty       Information about the disk (informational only) #
#       ns       number of 1k sectors/track                      #
#       nt       number of tracks/cylinder                       #
#       nc       number of cylinders/disk                        #
#       s0       size of file system in 1k blocks                #
#       b0       block size in bytes                             #
#                        (only 8192 or 4096 supported)           #
#       f0       fragment sizes in bytes                         #
#                     (1K, 2K, or 4K are supported)              #
#       se       #bytes/physical sector     (informational only) #
#       rm       rpm (rotational speed of platters)              #
##################################################################
...
#####################################################
# Rodime disk drive.
# Set rotdelay = 0 ms for optimal file system perf (see tunefs(1M))
rodimeRO3000T_noreserve|RODIME_RO3000T_noreserve:\
        :No swap or boot:ns#16:nt#9:nc#1424:\
        :s0#205056:b0#8192:f0#1024:\
        :se#512:rm#3600:
rodimeRO3000T_noswap|RODIME_RO3000T_noswap:\
        :No swap or boot:ns#16:nt#9:nc#1424:\
        :s0#205056:b0#8192:f0#1024:\
        :se#512:rm#3600:
rodimeRO3000T|RODIME_RO3000T|rodimeRO3000T_32MB|RODIME_RO3000T_32MB:\
        :32 Mbytes reserved for swap & boot:ns#16:nt#9:nc#1196:\
        :s0#172224:b0#8192:f0#1024:\
        :se#512:rm#3600:
rodimeRO3000T_44MB|RODIME_RO3000T_44MB:\
        :44 Mbytes reserved for swap & boot:ns#16:nt#9:nc#1111:\
        :s0#159984:b0#8192:f0#1024:\
        :se#512:rm#3600:
rodimeRO3000T_50MB|RODIME_RO3000T_50MB:\
        :50 Mbytes reserved for swap & boot:ns#16:nt#9:nc#1068:\
        :s0#153792:b0#8192:f0#1024:\
        :se#512:rm#3600:
rodimeRO3000T_64MB|RODIME_RO3000T_64MB:\
        :64 MBbytes reserved for swap & boot:ns#16:nt#9:nc#968:\
        :s0#139392:b0#8192:f0#1024:\
        :se#512:rm#3600:
###############################################
...

I used the values from the first entry:

disk type 4 (SCSI), RODIME:
interleave 1, rpm 3600, trackskew 0, cylinderskew 0
headswitch 0, track-to-track 0, drivedata: 0 0 0 0 0

bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 32
tracks/cylinder: 9
sectors/cylinder: 288
cylinders: 1424

8 partitions:
     size    offset
a:   62784,    0
b:   11718,    62784
c:   410112,    0
d:   0,    0
e:   0,    0
f:   0,    0
g:   0,    0
h:   0,    0

I suspect that the my offsets are wrong. I thought that the 'a' partition
would start at position 0 of the disk and be x bytes long, the 'b' partition
would start at 0+x and be y bytes long, and the 'c' partition(being the whole
disk) would start at 0 and be MAX bytes long.

On a side note, I've noticed a few bugs in the SYS_INST boot program.
Unless you enter a correct disk label on the first attempt, the SYS_INST
program will not let you enter the disklabel section, regardless of the
validity of the disklabel you entered.
Additionally, none of the writes to the disklabel survived a reboot.

Thanks for your time,

Mike
(:

--------TFSmiles@ecst.csuchico.edu-----------------The glass is too big--------