At 7:33 PM +0200 7/17/03, Emmanuel Dreyfus wrote:

:)Apple's XServe runs NetBSD quite well. There are a few caveats that are not
:)covered by our documentation:

Which one?  The original Xserve or one of the newer models (Xserve (Slot
Load) or Xserve (Cluster Node))?  We've only had reports of the original
model working with NetBSD.

:)- In order to get default I/O to the serial console, remove the video board.

There's probably also an Open Firmware devalias for it.  Any chance you
could try setting your input-device and output-device to scca and
reset-all?  That's the devalias used for the other Open Firmware 3 models
with serial ports (i.e. PowerMacs with Griffin Gee Three serial ports
replacing the modem).

:)- Serial console runs at 56.7k in OF, not 38.4k. The install kernel runs
:with
:)a 38.4k serial console, therefore we must change the serial console settings
:)after booting from OF and before running sysinst.

Which install kernel -- INSTALL or GENERIC_MD?  INSTALL isn't really
recommended for OF 3 systems.  Probably just a matter of a fixed speed set
in /etc/ttys.

:)- It's quite tricky to get the machine to auto-boot. Matt Thomas gave me
:)some tricks I was not able to find in the documentation. Maybe this
:applies to
:)more OF3 machines than just the XServe:

Yes, this procedure ought to work on all OF versions, not just 3.  It's a
bit kludgey, so I'm not putting it in the docs yet.  Also, MBR partitioned
disks ought to work on all OF versions.  It'd be *great* if someone were to
overhaul sysinst to default to one of these two behaviors.  Having OF 1/2
and 3 use different installation methods sucks.  Also, that we don't have
an easy way to set up a NetBSD-only disk for OF 3 in sysinst sucks.

:)You should see the ISO image content. I don't know why, but on my image,
:)the file turned to be OFWBOOT.XCF;1

Pure ISO 9660 Level 1 is something like 8.8;1 all caps where the ;1 is the
version number of the file (similar to VMS).  I was under the impression
that all versions of Open Firmware can only understand Level 1, so even if
the ISO image has Level 2 or 3, OF will only look at the Level 1 info.

:)Last question: you do we stop the machine from auto-booting when using the
:)serial console? Do we need to attach a keyboard and press cmd-opt-O-F?

Probably.  The other option is if your Xserve has Darwin or OSX, then you
can use the nvram(8) command to change the auto-boot? variable to false
before rebooting.  In theory, NetBSD/macppc should have an eeprom(8)
command that does this too (like Sun-based platforms).

Thanks for the feedback,
  -- MW