On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 09:41:46AM -0800, Jeff Rizzo wrote:
> Hi-
> 
> I'm trying to use very recent bootblocks (from 3-4 days ago) to boot
> a soekris 4521 from compact flash.  I *did* have this machine
> booting successfully from flash circa 1.6P, but with the install I
> did yesterday, I get:
> 
>  1 Seconds to automatic boot.   Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.
> 
> NetBSD/i386 ffsv1 Primary Bootstrap
> Boot failed: Can't open /boot.
> 
> No Boot device available, enter monitor.
> 
> 
> Now, looking over the soekris mailing lists showed me that some people
> have trouble booting from some CF devices because of some problem with
> reading more than one sector at a time using BIOS calls on certain
> flash devices;  apparently at least FreeBSD has patched their bootloader
> to read one sector at a time.  Is there any chance that this is what
> I'm seeing?  It doesn't seem likely, because I had it booting from
> the older bootblocks, but I don't really know what's changed.
> If it *is* the problem, can anyone give me a clue as to what to
> patch to do single-sector reads?
> 
> The other possibility is that I biffed the new bootblock install
> procedure.  Here's what I did:
> 
> - copied /usr/mdec/boot to /dev/wd0a (the filesystem on /dev/wd0a, that is)
> - installboot -v /dev/rwd0a /usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv1
> - reboot
> 
> ...perhaps *that* is where I fell down.
> 
> Clues appreciated,

Well multi-sector reads must be working - they are used to pull in the
code that tries to open /boot.

Is wd0a at the start of the netbsd bios partition?

	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk