Improving bare-install

[Chris Hanson <cmhanson%eschatologist.net@localhost>]

I’ve acquired an HP 9000/425t and one of the systems I want to put on it is NetBSD. I’m starting with 8.0 under the assumption using the most recently released not-in-development version will be the most-supported route.

I’ve managed to netboot the 425t from my Mac and can run both of the available boot programs, SYS_UBOOT and SYS_INST. However, neither of them will let me easily install via the NetBSD 8.0 hp300 ISO, which is what I was hoping for. I also can’t just put miniroot.fs onto a CD-ROM and tell SYS_INST to install it to the swap partition from there, because miniroot.fs is a filesystem image rather than a partitioned device image.

Given that, does anyone who knows more about the constraints under which they operate have an idea of what it would take to make it easier to get a bare install working? I can see a couple of routes to start with:

(0) When generating the ISO maybe don’t gzip the kernel or miniroot.fs to make the below easier.

(1) Make SYS_UBOOT support booting from a kernel on an ISO-9660 image, e.g. when it asks for a kernel allow typing in sd5:/hp300/binary/kernel/netbsd_RAMDISK and make it feasible for that to boot.

(2) Make SYS_INST support installing a miniroot from a raw device, e.g. if I just burn miniroot.fs onto a CD-ROM and tell SYS_INST the SCSI ID of the CD-ROM drive, it should be able to look at the device contents and install the miniroot.fs from there.

(3) Make SYS_INST support installing a miniroot.fs from an ISO-9660 image, e.g. let me type sd5:/hp300/installation/miniroot/miniroot.fs as the location of the miniroot.

(4) Make the ISO itself bootable. I think this would require at minimum wrapping it in an oldschool HP partition layout/filesystem, so SYS_UBOOT and/or SYS_INST could be loaded from it. It’d probably also require at least some if not all of the above.

(5) Provide netboot-to-install instructions in addition to netboot-diskless-workstation instructions. I’m trying to figure out how to do an install when netbooted; my impression is that I should be able to boot via NFS and then start an install on local disk somehow. But I’m not entirely sure how.

Anyone have any suggestions, walkthroughs, “no way that could be made to happen, we only have space for 12KB of code” comments, etc.? Thanks!

  -- Chris