As for panicing, is the root a SunOS root or a NetBSD root?  If the former,
   then did you have SunOS emulation turned on?  Be aware that the emulation
   isn't perfect or complete, and some of the more systemish commands
   (format comes to mind) won't run under NetBSD emulation.

it's much better than the solaris one, though.  and sun had the source
to sunos to work the emulation out from for that too.

besides format, and libkvm programs, what else is there that doesn't
work ?  who needs format, anyway ?  disklabel(8) works for us now.