hi,

This is the right place to ask.  Bill's answers are good, too.

I had thought most of these questions were answered in the install
notes and on the Web page. If you had trouble finding the answers,
please send an email to Simon Burge (simonb@netbsd.org) explaining
what you couldn't find, and where you looked.

Maybe an updated ``FAQ'' section would help....
 
>> As far as I've understood, it uses tftp to boot a kernel over a network,
>> but how do I set up Linux to send the kernel, and how do I make it accept
>> the IP-adress Linux assigns it?

>I think you need to use bootp for this, though I'm not a netboot jock. :-)

That's right. dhcpd will work, too. You can use the ISC dhcpd so the
config-file syntax is the same. I thought that was in the install docs?


Once the diskless machine has got an IP address via bootp/dhcp, it
tries to load a kernel via tftp. you need to enable tftp in your
inetd.conf and then put a NetBSD kernel (ECOFF-format, since that's
what the PROm expects) in your tftp directory.


>> If everything else fails, it would of course be possible to rip out the
>> harddrive and, using a Linux system (I don't have access to any NetBSD
>> system, and installing one just to set up my DECstation seems a little
>> overkill) to set up the harddisk. As far as I can recall, Linux fdisk does
>> make NetBSD filesystems, but does anybody know if there is any
>> documentation on how to create a basic NetBSD system from a Linux system?
>
>I think netbooting would be by far easier. The problem w/ having Linux
>create the disk is that it would use a different disk partitioning scheme
>than the one used by NetBSD/pmax. Different manufacturers used different
>disk partitioning schemes, and NetBSD usually tried to be compatable with
>the vendor scheme for a port. So NetBSD/i386 uses DOS partitions,
>NetBSD/mac68k or macppc uses Apple's scheme, and NetBSD/pmax is compatable
>w. Ultrix's.

Worse than that. NetBSD uses the BSD FFS by default. Linux (as of
2.0.) doesn't grok FFS, so you can't use Linux to populate an FFS
fileystem.  NetBSD does grok the Linux ext2 fs, but the NetBSD/pmax
booblocks only understand FFS....


>> Any help would be greatly appreciated. I hope I do not bore anybody with
>> such rudimentary questions, but NetBSD and DECstations is pretty new
>> material too me :)
>
>These questions are fine for the list. ;-)


>Another thing to try would be to hook the disk up to the Linux box, and
>get the disk image (see install notes for more info). You then just copy
>the disk image to the disk, then hook it back up to the 2100.

Yup.  You can just ``dd'' the diskiamge onto the target disk, move it
to the 2100, and boot via boot -f rz(0,?,0)netbsd.  Then run sysinst,
and follow the menus. If it's an internal disk, and you grok Linux
network admin (for bootp/dchp, tftp, and starting an NFS server)
diskless-boot may be easier, if you have space on the Linux box to
untar the diskimage.tar.gz (a tarfile copy of the contents of the FFS
diskimage).