Hi!

Ola Olsson wrote:
[..]
>I copy the miniroot as indicated with the following results:
>
>7.STORE:NetBSD_1.3> xstreamtodev --input=miniroot.fs --rdb-name=SWAP
>found partition: "SWAP" capacity: 211.4 Megs
>start block: 3793635  end block: 4226606 total blocks: 432972
>block Size: 512
>dumping to: start block: 3793635 to end block: 4226606 [size: 216485K]
>
>write from file "miniroot.fs" to partition "SWAP"? [Ny]:y
>reading: 03801827 -> 03801926  [  1%]
>7.STORE:NetBSD_1.3>
>
>Finally I boot using Loadbsd -b Netbsd. SD3 is the NetBSD drive. At
>this point I am prompted for the root device. The root partition is
>sd3a, although I remember from the 1.1 install that I would enter
>sd3*.

You created the miniroot filesystem on the swap partition, so you
should boot from it (sd3b).  This is only needed until your root
partition is set up correctly, then you want to boot from sd3a.

>I'm next prompted for the "dump" device. What is the dump
>device? At first I assumed it was the SWAP partition so I entered that
>(sd3d).

I'm myself pretty new to NetBSD but I suppose it's the same as
Sun's dump device.  In case of a severe kernel crash a safe place
is needed to create a memory dump. This allows post-mortem analysis of
the crash.  Simply creating a core file on one of the mounted file
systems is not too smart: you can easily trash a partition with a system
in an unstable state.  The swap partition is a good choice, you have
no need of it's contents any more after your system panics *that*
badly :-) and it's guaranteed to be big enough to fit a whole
memory image.

Are you sure sd3d is your swap partition?  I had the impression
that NetBSD configures the partition table as sd*a for root, sd*b
for swap and any other partition as sd*d and up, regardless of the
physical sequence on the HD.  Double check if the DOSType setting
for your swap part is set up correctly.

>Last I'm prompted for the file system. I just hit return to
>use the default "generic" although I've tried NFS and others just to
>see what would happen. In any case, the installation never goes
>anywhere.

Hope this gets you out of things...

    Michael B"ohnisch