On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 04:20:41PM -0700, Marc Tooley wrote:
> 
> And I can get it to boot from CDROM, get it to install NetBSD on the 
> hard drive, and get it to tell me that everything seems to have 
> completed successfully.
> 
> Unfortunately, on reboot it hangs at:
> 
> Verifying DMI pool data...

Since that is (apparantly) a bios message, try testing the boot
procedure phase by phase.

Try installing the mbr_bootsel code - run fdisk and give the partition
a 'bootmenu' string [1].  Then booting should give you the boot menu.
Press a key and something should happen (unexpected oner give 'error ?').

If that doesn't work, double check that the bios is actually configured
to boot off the hard disk, and that sector zero contains the code from
/usr/mdec/mbr_bootsel.

If that is ok, check that the first sector of partion 'a' (or whatever
you root partition is) contains the start of /usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv1.

There is a known bug that causes 'disklabel -r -w ...' to copy sector
zero to the first sector of the partition - which might cause an endless
boot loop.

The bios/disk geometry problem is moot - the mbr code will use LBA
addressing if there is a geometry mismatch.

	David

[1] boot the install CD and exit sysinst...
If you are short of commands try:
# mount /dev/wd0a /mnt
# chroot /mnt /bin/sh -i
which should give you access to all the installed programs, not just those
on the install media.

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