qiwen@glue.phys.washington.edu wrote:

> Well, I downloaded the files off your site and begin to install it today.
> However, I was having some trouble at the point it prompt for
>
> root device (default sda0a):
> dump device (default sd0b):
> file system (default generic):
> root on sd0a dumps on sd0b sd0:
> no disk label no file
> system for sd0 (dev 0x0)
> cannot mount root, error = 79
>
> I left everything as default, the error I got was above.  How do I
> resolve this problem.

Ok the error message means you don't have a vaild NetBSD 'root'filesystem to
mount which is true!.

Currently a standalone installation method for NetBSD 'arc'
doesn't exit.

The usual way to boot on arc is setup a root filesystem
on a NFS server see 'booting diskless' the 'root device'
is 'sn0' for sonic (ethernet driver).

A second way to install the way root filesystem (although
I have never tried it) is to install the SCSI hardrive
in an i386 computer and use the NetBSd 'i386'
boot floppies to make an filesystem. In theory
this should work as i386 and arc are both little endian.
If wish to attempt to try this 'alternate' method of
installation, follow these instructions:
1. Make a 10 meg FAT partition with DOS
fdisk and format ... copy netbsd.ecoff here.
2.Download from ftp.netbsd.org the boot and
root images for netbsd1.5 i386, exapand the
images to floppy with rawrite.
3.Boot nebsd , fdisk the hardrive creating
the Netbsd partition in the 'remaining' hard disk
space space with two 'slices'... sd0a for root,
sd0b for swap,exit from the install procedure
after filesystem is created.
4.Follow the nebsd install instructions
on how to expand binary sets to newly
created(empty) filesystem.. The sets
to install are from
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.5/arc/binary/sets.
The two required sets to boot are base.tgz and etc.tgz ... other's
can be added later..

Hope this helps!