On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 22:57:30 +0200, Michael Bramley <brams@mac.com> wrote:
> Can you point me in the direction of somewhere that can pretty easily
> explain how to get netBSD 2.0 up and running on a Cobalt Qube 2?.  I've got
> access to the machine again in two weeks and then that will be it for about
> a year.  (it lives in my house in the UK with my mother and I live in
> Beirut, Lebanon)

I think there is someone working on a NetBSD 2.0 Cobalt boot CD to
automate this but I haven't heard anything lately.

It's not very easy, but here are the steps I used to install 2.0 on my Cube2:

1. Cross-compile kernel from another NetBSD computer
2. Extract filesets into a directory and copy kernel there
3. Set up netboot on that computer to send the kernel
4. Set up NFS on that computer to share directory as root filesystem

Those are the more difficult steps.  For more information on how to
set up that kind of thing you can have a look at the NetBSD 1.6.1
Cobalt boot CD and diskless howtos.

5. Connect null-modem cable so you can see what is going on and log in
6. Netboot Cube2 - you will be booted into a NetBSD 2.0 system
7. Partition hardrive (need Linux ext2fs for bootloader; NetBSD fs for /)
8. Create filesystems and mount them
9. Copy bootloader to ext2fs as vmlinux.gz (more info in the Cobalt FAQ)
10. Copy kernel and extract desired filesets to / filesystem on harddrive
11. Reboot and you should boot into NetBSD 2.0

Sorry these instructions aren't very detailed.  I spent two evenings
figuring out the details and I was new to NetBSD and Cube2s.  I may
write step-by-step instructions and submit them for inclusion in the
FAQ but so far I have had little time to tinker with my Cube2.

Daniel

PS: Almost forgot: the kernel you use to netboot cannot be over a
certain size; see the FAQ.  I used the GENERIC kernel configuration
and removed all support for SCSI and other hardware that is not in the
Cube2.