Gregory:
I am now trying to use the sysinst available
on the netbsd.RAMDISK.  As you thought,
this version had no illegal instruction errors,
but there is still a problem: Both the upgrade
and install menu options fail with the error:

     Status: Failed: command failed
    Command: /usr/mdec/installboot /usr/mdec/sd1boot /dev/rsd1a
     Press any key to continue
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Usage: installboot bootprog device
/usr/mdec/sd1boot: bootprog must be a regular file

It appears that there is a bug in that installboot
is trying to install a file called "sd1boot",
which does not exist in the ramdisk's filesystem.
What _does_ exist in /usr/mdec is "uboot.lif".

# ls: /usr/mdec/sd1boot: No such file or directory
# total 86
  1 drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel    512 Jul 12 06:44 .
  1 drwxr-xr-x  6 root  wheel    512 Jul 12 06:44 ..
  1 -r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    523 Jul 12 06:44 installboot
 84 -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  78216 Jul 12 06:44 uboot.lif

I'm going to try the network installation that I used
to install the 4/15/2002 snapshot.

One request: If you haven't already added this to
the instructions, could you tell people running with
non-hp300 emulation to exit the sysinst menu and run
the "export TERM=vt100" command?

-Sageev

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gregory McGarry" <g.mcgarry@ieee.org>
To: "Sageev George" <sageev@bmsrs.usc.edu>
Cc: <port-hp300@netbsd.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 9:16 PM
Subject: Re: Installing use current snapshot RAMDISK kernel


> Sageev George wrote:
>
> > First, let me say that by following your instructions
> > to replace the netbsd install kernel with a generic
> > kernel on exported filesystem, I was able to get the
> > -current snapshot (4/15/2002) up and running (both on a
> > local drive, and a diskless system).
>
> Excellent!  The snapshot you are installing is actually
> older than the 1.6_BETAx releases available at
>
> ftp://releng.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/
>
> You might prefer the beta release since there are many
> problems that have been fixed.
>
> > Because I felt that the network booting was straight
> > in my mind, _and_ in response to your request, I did
> > try an install using the sysinst in the RAMDISK kernel.
>
> Thanks for testing it out.
>
> > Although the netbsd.ramdisk (from the 4/15/2002 snapshot)
> > did load over the network, there was an error at the end,
> > when the installation program usually starts.  I had seen
> > this behavior before, when I tried using "dd" to dump the
> > miniroot filesystem to my swap partition.  As happened here,
> > even though the kernel loaded, I got a lot of "illegal
> > instruction" errors, either in the upgrade program, or
> > just running binaries that were located in the filesystem.
> >
> > Am I doing something wrong here?  Console output is
> > below.
>
> No, you're not doing anything wrong.  This is a known problem
> with the snapshot that I didn't clarify in the README file
> available with the snapshot.  I have now updated that file.
>
> The problem is that the install kernels (such as the one in
> the ramdisk kernel) didn't include support for floating point
> interface on 68040 cpus.  It has been fixed in the 1.6_BETA
> snapshots.
>
> I apologise for this.  I hope it didn't cause you to waste
> time on it.  Also, thanks for persisting with testing the
> installation media.  Unfortunately the 1.6 release has
> had very little testing, so your persistence is valuable.
>
> -- Gregory McGarry <g.mcgarry@ieee.org>
>