Re: Booting with root fs on another partition

[Wim Lewis <wiml%hhhh.org@localhost>]

On May 6, 2009, at 10:03 AM, Christos Zoulas wrote:
> Can you boot netbsd -a and type the root partition manually?

Good idea, but apparently not. (At first I had trouble passing boot  
flags to the kernel at all --- I think the problem was I was using an  
old version of ofwboot.xcf from 4.0.1.) The problem now is that the  
kernel doesn't recognize keyboard input when it's prompting for the  
root partition or for the path to init. Oddly, it does recognize the  
keyboard earlier in the boot process, if I pass -c to get the kernel  
config prompt; and of course it also has no trouble with the keyboard  
later, when the machine has finished booting up.

I guess that in between those points, the open firmware I/O routines  
are no longer being used but netbsd's own USB keyboard support isn't  
working yet.

What I'm doing is:
   At the open firmware '0>' prompt, typing 'boot -a' to get to the  
ofwboot 'Boot:' prompt
   At that prompt, typing '/netbsd5.gz -a' to boot the 5.0-GENERIC  
kernel downloaded from netbsd.org

The kernel then boots, and prompts for the name of the root  
partition, but doesn't respond to keyboard input; I have to power- 
cycle. Passing '-c' results in a functional ukc> dialogue, and  
passing no flag at all boots into multiuser mode w/o any problems  
(other than using the wrong partition for the root filesystem).

> Or create a custom kernel with hard-coded root?

That was my second approach, but my attempt to compile a 5.0 kernel  
in 4.0.1 resulted in a kernel that paniced during boot. I can compile  
a custom 4.0 kernel, so I assumed there's some toolchain  
incompatibility --- I didn't investigate further. It's very possible  
I made a mistake compiling the 5.0 kernel.

I think I'll try to get a custom kernel to work. Does anyone know if  
it *should* be possible to compile a working 5.0 kernel using 4.0.1's  
tools?