> After some fooling around I have NetBSD booting on a SPARCstation LX.

Can you define "fooling around"?  We have a spare LX here at work that's
currently doing yeoman duty as a Solaris 2.5 test mule, but after that
effort is over ...

> I'd like to re-label, and preferrably reformat, the internal disk in
> the workstation before installing NetBSD on it.  What I would normally do for
> this is to boot a SunOS 4.x disk which I have for this purpose and run format
> from there but the LX won't boot SunOS the way it is [...]

"LX won't boot SunOS the way it is"?  I've never heard of an LX that
couldn't boot SunOS ...  why not slap a CD-ROM drive on it and boot off
of the 4.1.4 CD-ROM into MUNIX and re-label from "format" there?  Seems like
the path of least resistance to me ...

> the one SunOS disk, the idea of doing to it what I did to make NetBSD boot
> is unappealing.  I tried running the SunOS format program under NetBSD but
> it isn't happy and complains about not being able to find any disks.

My 1.0 system (yes, yes, *sigh* ... PK, how about a -current binary snapshot
now that the sun4m stuff is in ...) barfs thusly:

  8522 format   CALL  write(0x1,0x395d0,0x16)
  8522 format   GIO   fd 1 wrote 22 bytes
       "Searching for disks..."
  8522 format   RET   write 22/0x16
  8522 format   CALL  open(0xf7fff278,0x6,0x63)
  8522 format   NAMI  "/dev/rsd0c"
  8522 format   RET   open 4
  8522 format   CALL  ioctl(0x4,0x403c647e ,0xf7fff604)
  8522 format   RET   ioctl -1 errno 25 Inappropriate ioctl for device
  8522 format   CALL  close(0x4)
  8522 format   RET   close 0
  8522 format   CALL  open(0xf7fff278,0x6,0x63)
  8522 format   NAMI  "/dev/rsd1c"
  8522 format   RET   open -1 errno 16 Device busy
  8522 format   CALL  open(0xf7fff278,0x6,0x63)
  8522 format   NAMI  "/dev/rsd2c"
  8522 format   RET   open -1 errno 16 Device busy
  8522 format   CALL  open(0xf7fff278,0x6,0x63)
  8522 format   NAMI  "/dev/rsd3c"
  8522 format   RET   open -1 errno 16 Device busy
  8522 format   CALL  open(0xf7fff278,0x6,0x63)
  8522 format   NAMI  "/dev/rsd4c"
  8522 format   RET   open 4
  8522 format   CALL  ioctl(0x4,0x403c647e ,0xf7fff604)
  8522 format   RET   ioctl -1 errno 25 Inappropriate ioctl for device
  8522 format   CALL  close(0x4)
  8522 format   RET   close 0
  8522 format   CALL  getuid
  8522 format   RET   getuid 0
  8522 format   CALL  write(0x2,0xf7ffee28,0x10)
  8522 format   GIO   fd 2 wrote 16 bytes
       "No disks found!

> In any case, the best solution would be to be able to label (and reformat,
> though I could do without this) a Sun disk from NetBSD.  I was wondering if
> there is now a way to do this which I haven't been able to find, or if SunOS
> is still the only game in town for this.  If the latter is still true this is
> going to be more complicated than it needs to be.

Beg, borrow or steal a CD-ROM drive and a 4.1.4 CD-ROM, if you have access to
same.

	- Greg