On Mon, Apr 03, 2000 at 04:50:55PM -0400, Andrew Gillham wrote:
> For some reason I can't get a NFS root to work correctly.  I can load
> the kernel ok, but then it times out on the DHCP.  So apparently the
> firmware can DHCP, but NetBSD can't.  I did see a couple of 'tlp' related
> commits recently, but I'm assuming your latest kernel has them.  Using
> tcpdump, I don't seen any packets from NetBSD during the DHCP attempt.

Hmm. Could you send me the kernel output?

> So, do you have (/could you make/) a kernel with an internal ramdisk?

I am moving offices right now, but if can't make one yourself, I can
make one for you later.

> I foolishly attempted to use disklabel to create a wd0a, but it overwrote
> the MBR information.  I then (thought I had) rebuilt it, but the firmware
> can't boot from it.
>
> Some tips on how you repartitioned your disk would be usefull also. :)

I left one of the Linux root ext2 partition, made that "/stand" (so that
the firmware has a place to load the kernel from), nuked the other
filesystems and created normal FFS filesystems for the rest.

> I need to look at the source I guess.  I was assuming the disklabel could
> be created without overwriting the MBR (like on i386), is this the case?

Yes. You can access the native MBR with fdisk.

Hmm, if you didn't start out by making a NetBSD (type 169) MBR
partition, writing the disklabel may have scribbled on the first
ext2 filesystem. See below.

Come to think of it, perhaps I didn't either. I think I may have just
used the smallish Linux /var partition (not at the start of the disk)
as the boot partition.

The correct way would have been to make a NetBSD "wd0c" MBR partition.

> I guess NetBSD doesn't have a 'newfs_ext2fs' either, so I may have to

Unfortunately no.

> just reinstall Linux and start over.

If you still have a working ext2 filesystem around, you can frob the
MBR so that it becomes the first partition in the table.

> Come to think of it, I might be able to use the cross compiler stuff for
> the ramdisk as well?

Sure (just use the snapshot binaries). The only tricky thing is that
mdsetimage isn't cross-platform, but you can use the cross/bfd-mdsetimage
package.


-- 
Soren