On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 01:41:46PM -0500, Andrew Gillham wrote:
> Ok, I'm ready to install NetBSD on my CacheRAQ!
> 
> Is there a specific firmware version required, or anything like
> that?  Do I netboot a kernel, or use the existing Linux partition to
> load it, etc? 

I will try to write a short FAQ later, but here's a few useful notes.

Hold the reset button ("pencil" button left of the keypad area on
the front) in while powering on to turn on/off the firmware console
on the serial port. It's 115200 bps, 8N1.

Press the space bar while the diagnostics run to halt the autoboot
process.

The default autoboot process loads a gzip'ed ELF kernel from
/boot/vmlinux_raq-2800.gz (on my RaQ 2 - the name varies between
models) from an EXT2 filesystem on the first MBR partition on the
primary disk.

There is no provision for changing the boot path beyond disabling
autoboot and the kernel (or the boot loader, if we write one) must
always be gzip'ed.

Holding in the left and right cursor keys while powering on boots
the kernel /usr/games/.doug .

Holding all cursor keys in while powering on executes the command
'bfd /boot/vmlinux_raq-2800.gz root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=/nfsroot'.

Type ? at the firmware prompt to get a list of commands.

To boot NetBSD you can either put a kernel at /usr/games/.doug
or netboot with e.g. 'bfd /boot/netbsd.gz nfsroot=/nfsroot'. The
firmware is picky about syntax and in general, so if things fail
mysteriously, try to conform to the conventions described above.

For now the four MBR partitions are mapped to [e-h]. We don't
yet get boot parameters, so it will be as if you used RB_ASKNAME.


-- 
Soren