On Tue, Oct 13, 1998 at 01:39:09PM -0700, Jonathan Stone wrote:
> In message <19981013004159.A8396@zork.net>Nick Moffitt writes
> >	Well, here in San Francisco, I'm seeing a lot of these
> >DECStation 5000/25s being chucked from IS departments and university
> >labs left and right. 
> 
> Well, if you manage to snarf a couple, the NetBSD Project can
> find good homes for two or three. Especially ones with expansion
> RAM in them.

	I'll see what I can do.  I used to have a lead on more of
them, personally, but for now I just have the one.  I'll talk to some
of my friends and see if they're going to go through on the install of
NetBSD on theirs.

> > More often than not they've been landing in the
> >laps of some well meaning Linux types who want to put an
> >open-source OS on the thing.  I think that a general covering of
> >the following topics would have made my installation experience
> >much better:
[partitioning]
> The idea of overlapping partitions and not using all of them is
> entirely normal for the BSD world. Partly for historical reasons
> (disklabel-style partitions used to be compiled into kernels), partly
> for flexibility.

	I understand, and in many ways I see it as a superior method
to the bizarre one used in the intel world (I mean, 4 primary
partitions, which can be subdivided into logical partitions?  That's
pretty ad-hoc, if you ask me.)

> I think maybe we'd be better off with a ``BSD for Linux users'' page,
> explaining how BSD uses disklabels and the partition info in a BSD
> disklabel.  `chpt' is just an ugly special-case of that.

	That may very well be a good thing.  I got into this little
project partly because I wanted to learn a different hardware
platform, and partly because I want to learn the BSD way.  That, and
the little daemon is far cooler than the damn penguin >wink<.

> [prom syntax]
> Copious info on DECstation prom syntax is (or was) on the Web page.
> Maybe it needs to be more prominent.  

	My main problem with the online docs was the sheer
unnavigability of them.  Going to the pmax section takes you to a
pretty motley collection of docs, and a link which will eventually
take you to a slightly more complete collection.  I'd have greatly
appreciated an "EVERYTHING FOR PMAX" page with all the docs linked,
and a pointer to the non-architecture-specific stuff.

> [where to put ECOFF root]
> 
> Hm. The drop-a-netbsd-kernel-into-Ultrix-root-and-boot-NetbSD (using
> ultrix emulation to run the Ultrix binaries) install trick can,
> obviously, used by people who already had Ultrix. I assumed such
> people would be experienced Ultrix sysadmins, not people who had
> newly-acquired an Ultrix box.
> 
> Simon: could you note the part about where to put an ecoff kernel on
> an Ultrix root? I thought it was obvious, but apparently not.

	Part of my problem was that I was assigning far too much
intelligence to the boot PROMs.  I did, however, ultimately figure out
that the reason we were booting an ECOFF kernel was for UltrixBoot's
benefit.

> [fdisk vs disklabel]
> 
> >	OK.  Well, there is a man page for fdisk, and another for
> >adduser.  I'll look around--thanks!
> 
> 
> Don't look at fdisk. Please.  fdisk is for supporting i386 Master Boot
> Record (MBR) partition tables and bootblocks.  Those only exist on
> systems which understand and use MBRs -- mostly systems with PROM
> "BIOSes" that understand FAT filesystems, like DOS,Windows-9x, or NT.
> It's not relevant to pmaxes -- tho' it would be, say, for a
> little-endian ARC mips box.

	Don't worry!  I do indeed understand the difference.  My
confusion came from the fact that there are _man pages_ for fdisk and
adduser on my system, yet the utilities themselves haven't been
installed at all.  fdisk showed up in one of my apropos searches, and
I didn't spot disklabel until you pointed it out just then.

-- 
 * Progress (n.): The process through which Usenet has evolved from
   smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of
   smart terminals.  -- obs@burnout.demon.co.uk (obscurity)