Subject: miniroot
To: Reini (Reinhold Huber) <Reinhold.Huber@Fachschaften.TU-Muenchen.DE (Rein)>
From: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU>
List: port-pmax
Date: 10/07/1997 03:01:32
Reinhold Huber writes:

>> The problem is that the *miniroot* hasn't been rebuilt in ages.  I've
>> just been rebuilding diskimage.tar.gz, which is a disk image of a full
>> root filesystem.  That's much more convenient than dealing with
>> miniroots for almost everyone.
>> 
>> (The exceptions are those people with root-filesystem disks that are
>> smaller than 32 Mbytes. I'd advise such people to do a diskless
>> install and then tailor a local root filesystem.)
>> 
>
>And those who (try) to do a first install with a non - NetBSD machine
>as a helper. It would be a very nice thing if there were something like
>a miniroot or 32M-diskimage, which can simply be dd-ed on a disk,
>enabling to boot a NetBSD system to ftp the rest.

There already is a 32Mbyte diskimage. It can be dd'ed directly onto
the `whole disk' partition of a disk and booted.  That's the
`diskimage' I referred to in the message you quote.

I'm not sure what you are asking for here, that the diskimage does not
provide. Is there something missing from the diskimage?



>The install-script OpenBSD-pmax have on their 32MB image is really nice.

The OpenBSD-pmax install script is a port of an old version of the
NetBSD install scripts. If someone wanted to check out the current
NetBSD install scripts on a pmax, and port them to work on a diskimage
instead of an in-memory `miniroot', that would be a Very Good Thing.

(The NetbSD crunch tools don't work with MIPS elf, and the miniroot is
now too big for some systems, so I've never tried it as an MFS image.)



>And there may be people who only have 2100s or 3100s which cannot boot
>properly from network.

There is a stripped-down kernel which is under 800K which successfully
net-boots on 2100s and 3100s with old PROMs.  This has been part of
snapshots for something like a year (from memory, I'd have to check
the exact dates).  Frankly, I am confused. Where did you hear that
NetBSD doesn't netboot on 2100s or 3100s?  Is the Web page not clear,
or is this misinformation from elsewhere, or what?


I'm sorry, but as far as I know, the NetBSD/pmax snapshots can do all
the things you've asked for, -- except the install script! -- and have
done so for some time.