On Sat, 30 May 1998, Frederick Bruckman wrote:

> The Booter displays this messge:
> 
> 	Booting...File "netbsd.2hi" not found
> 	Could not open kernel "(0,?)netbsd.2hi"
> 
> on my system whenever the inode number of the kernel >= 47500. 
> I know this because there happen to be three in a row with inode numbers
> 47499, 47500, 47501. One of these used to boot, and I got the other to
> work by deleting some files and "cp"'ing it before "mv", thus taking the
> identical file to a lower inode number. Same thing with Booter 1.11.1 and
> 1.11.2.
> 
> A strange thing recently occurred with a new kernel. It booted at first,
> but at some point, there were all kinds of wierd errors in single user
> mode--"..executable is in wrong format"; also "sh" complained that it
> couldn't parse simple commands like ``mount -u /''. I had thought at the
> time, that my filesystem was corrupted. The problems uncovered by fsck:
> one directory named ",", and "summary information bad," don't really
> explain this problem. Perhaps these two oddities are related.
> 
> There are other problems with this file-system. It was originally made
> with ``newfs -O ...'', and then later upgraded with ``fsck -c 1 ...''. 
> ``fsck -c 3'' dumps core, and then I had to use ``fsck -b 2'' to clean up. 
> It now won't take ``newfs -n ...'' without complaining

Wait. You do remember that the booter only handles old-style ffs
partitions? I think they're level 1. So the booter and installer will have
problems with a partition that's at level 2 or 3.

I run into this as I used to use UNION mounts, which need a level 2 fs on
the upper layer (so they can make white-outs). The booter & installer
won't work w/ that, so I have root an old-style fs, and /y1 a level 2.
All the unionfs stuff happens on /y1. :-)

Take care,

Bill