Re: can't mount root partition on hp 620lx

[Valery Ushakov <uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost>]

On Wed, Oct 11, 2023 at 10:44:25 +0300, Andrius V wrote:

> vfs_mountroot: can't open root device
> cannot mount root, error = 6
> 
> wd0c, which I believe is "full disk" shows error = 22, and my FAT
> partition wd0d mounts, containing hpcboot200.exe and kernel, but
> obviously it is not root partition. Seemingly hpc labels are use one
> less letter compared to PC, where my FAT partition label is e and ffs
> is f. Thus, I would expect that ffs partition is wd0e in hpc machine,
> however it fails to mount with error above (error = 6). Are there any
> clear requirement for partitioning the disk, should I format ffs to
> certain version? Also dmesg shows "root on wd0a dumps on wd0b", do I
> need to create swap partition or something? Maybe I do something else
> incorrectly? Thanks.
> 
> fdisk output
> Disk: /dev/rsd3
> NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
> cylinders: 488, heads: 64, sectors/track: 32 (2048 sectors/cylinder)
> total sectors: 1000944, bytes/sector: 512
> 
> BIOS disk geometry:
> cylinders: 489, heads: 64, sectors/track: 32 (2048 sectors/cylinder)
> total sectors: 1000944
> 
> Partitions aligned to 2048 sector boundaries, offset 32
> 
> Partition table:
> 0: Primary DOS with 12 bit FAT (sysid 1)
>     start 32, size 49120 (24 MB, Cyls 0-23)
> 1: NetBSD (sysid 169)
>     start 49152, size 951792 (465 MB, Cyls 24-488/47/16), Active
>         PBR is not bootable: All bytes are identical (0x00)
> 2: <UNUSED>
> 3: <UNUSED>
> Bootselector disabled.
> First active partition: 1
> Drive serial number: 0 (0x00000000)
> 
> 
> disklabel (in PC):
> 6 partitions:
> #        size    offset     fstype [fsize bsize cpg/sgs]
>  c:    951792     49152     unused      0     0        # (Cyl.     24 -    488*)
>  d:   1000944         0     unused      0     0        # (Cyl.      0 -    488*)
>  e:     49120        32      MSDOS                     # (Cyl.      0*-     23)
>  f:    951792     49152     4.2BSD      0     0     0  # (Cyl.     24 -    488*)

You need the root to be called "a" as the kernel tell you with "root
on wd0a ..." (or change your kernel config file)

https://2004.eurobsdcon.org/uploads/media/EBSD04_37.pdf
This used to work 20 years ago :)


> P.S. Unrelated question: maybe hpc200.exe should be included in
> https://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/HEAD/latest/hpcsh/installation/,
> currently those with CE 2.0 need to browse NetBSD code, find encoded
> file in https://github.com/NetBSD/src/tree/trunk/sys/arch/hpc/stand/binary/SH3
> and do uudecode before using it (at least for me it took time to find
> that we have such a binary in the first place, just because I was
> looking for the code to potentially build it myself).

Yes, I think this was accidentally lost in sys/arch/hpc/stand/Makefile
revision 1.13

  date: 2004-03-19 11:07:22 +0300;  author: jmc;  state: Exp;  lines: +7 -3;
  branches:  1.13.2;
  Convert to usage of UUDECODE_FILES and standardize on filename extension

-uwe