NetBSD/hpcmips 8.1 on Workpad z50

[Alexander Bochmann <ab%lists.gxis.de@localhost>]

Hi -

I realize that NetBSD 9 is coming up, but I only just recently 
found the time to try installing 8.1 on the Workpad, so here's 
a short report on that: 

The installer crashes while trying to set up disk partitions 
(ended up using a previous installer to set up the disklabel),
and also later when trying to install the sets - both times 
the message is in the line of "/ filesystem full", so I assume 
it's running out of memory. (Is there some way to enable 
previously configured swap in the installer? swapctl isn't 
included with that...)
Manually unpacking the sets outside of the installer worked 
fine, so the I/O errors I've had with previous releases seem  
to be gone.

Booting the full system after installation needs a good five 
minutes. Unfortunately there's random segfaults and the system 
sometimes freezes completely - especially when trying to 
run something that involves crypto operations (ssh, or, though 
rarely, just changing a password with passwd).

I haven't tried looking at the core files yet, but I'm also 
unsure there's anything useful to learn from them?

Is X supposed to start on that platform nowadays? All I'm 
getting is a black screen (just using a console and tmux 
is probably more realistic anyway).

Alex.