On Sat, 05 Apr 2003, David Burgess wrote:
> I can reproduce this effect at will:
> 
> - Install NetBSD from floppies onto a new hard drive.  It's important to
> keep version compatability because of what happens next.
> 
> - Install the old hard drive onto the the secondary controller.  Mount it
> to /mnt.  The system boots just fine.
> 
> - cd to /mnt.  Then do 'find . | cpio -pdmuv /'.  Reboot.  No Joy.

cpio will overwrite the /boot file.  This will render the disk
unbootable because earlier stages of the boot blocks contain references
to the disk blocks that are covered by the /boot file (they do not use
the filesystem to find the /boot file).  You must use installboot to fix
this.

--apb (Alan Barrett)