Subject: Re: Soekris 4801-60 and boot loader countdown
To: Adrian Portelli <adrianp@stindustries.net>
From: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
List: port-i386
Date: 07/21/2006 09:03:11
On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 13:41:31 +0100, Adrian Portelli
<adrianp@stindustries.net> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I've recently had a chance to play with a Soekris 4801-60.  I've managed
> to get NetBSD 3.0 successfully running off a CF card but I have one
> small issue that's more annoying than anything else.  On my standard
> i386 boxen I get the 5 second boot loader countdown before NetBSD loads
> but on the Soekris it counts down the 5 seconds *really* fast, like
> almost impossible to interrupt.
> 
> The same issue is described here: http://blog.onetbsd.de/?p=95 so I
> don't think I'm alone.  I've had a quick look through gnats and nothing
> jumps out.  Has anyone seen this issue before or know of any workarounds
> ?  I haven't tried anything else on the box other than 3-0-RELEASE.
> 
> I thought of maybe increasing the timer to 30 seconds or 60 seconds using:
> 
> installboot -v -o timeout=60 /dev/rwd0a /usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv1
> 
> to see if that can give me some chance to interrupt it, but when I do
> that I get "Boot failed (errno  2): Can't open /boot." on reboot.
> 
See http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-embed/2005/10/15/0003.html for what
I was told.


		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb