Re: Can't find init when booting 5.0 install CD with serial console

[Andrew Doran <ad%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Hi Ray,

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 01:55:05PM +1000, Ray Phillips wrote:

> I made a CD from this .iso image:
> 
>   ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.0/i386/installation/cdrom/boot.iso
>
> then booted a PC from it, chose option 4 from the boot menu to get a 
> boot prompt and executed 'consdev com0' so I could capture the 
> console output.  It failed to get as far as running sysinst because 
> it couldn't find /sbin/init, as shown in the output below.
> 
> The CD works fine when just using the default setting, 1.
> 
> By the way, what do the other options in the consdev line mean?

Have a look at the manual page for 'boot', it should explain them.

> boot device: cd0
> root on cd0a dumps on cd0b
> root file system type: cd9660
> warning: no /dev/console
> exec /sbin/init: error 2

In 5.0, the CD-ROM does not contain a bootable file system. For this you
need to load the miniroot kernel module, which contains the root FS in a
ramdisk. So, from the boot prompt you would type (for instance):

> load /miniroot.kmod
> boot

If you choose option 1, this is done automatically.