Subject: Re: Booting (and stuff, like X)
To: Matt London <matt@knm.yi.org>
From: David Maxwell <david@vex.net>
List: port-i386
Date: 06/14/2001 20:15:49
On Thu, Jun 14, 2001 at 06:04:07PM +0100, Matt London wrote:
> Hi,
>   I'm a newbie to NetBSD/i386 - I've got NetBSD/vax and NetBSD/sparc
> working quite happily, both from a local drive and over the network. So I
> thought I might play with NetBSD/i386.

Aha, another addict.

>   The problem is the only space I have to put it ATM is on a SCSI drive,
> and my scsi card has no bios, so I can't boot from SCSI. So, no problem
> thinks I, and I've got a 60M partition on an IDE drive (wd2g). Now, the
> problem is, how do I set things up so it can boot from there, and then
> pull the root fs from sd0a? ATM I'm booting with the install CD to pull up

In the kernel config file, you will find a section like this:

# Kernel root file system and dump configuration.
config          netbsd  root on ? type ?
#config         netbsd  root on sd0a type ffs
#config         netbsd  root on ? type nfs

Comment the first, uncomment the second, and you're done :-)

>   Next thing I'd like to sort is X - ATM (after running xf86config) when
> you run startx it's just pulling up a black screen (no pointer) - right
> resolution, just no apparent way to exit.

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace is the way to exit - if X is properly running -
there's a chance that it messed up your video config, and didn't make it
back to text mode. Try switching to other wsconsoles (ctrl-alt-F2..F4)
if you have them enabled.

Also, run startx and capture the output (stdout and stderr) and you'll
get quite a bit of info about what it thinks about your config.
Recommending a fix without seeing that output is... pointless :-)

-- 
David Maxwell, david@vex.net|david@maxwell.net --> Mastery of UNIX, like
mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear,
but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live
in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. - Thomas Scoville