Subject: Re: netbsd on different partition
To: Brad Walker <bwalker@breakthru.musings.com>
From: Brian C. Grayson <bgrayson@ece.utexas.edu>
List: port-sparc
Date: 01/22/1997 23:01:42
Brad Walker wrote:
> 
> I'm attempting to install and get running NetBSD 1.2 on the d partition
> of my SS1. The system boots fine then right after all the probing of
> devices it locks tighter than a drum. Has anyone tried installing
> the system on a different partition just for sanity sake..

  FWIW, with -i386:
  
  In the past I've installed a copy of my root filesystem onto
/dev/wd0f, and booted off of wd(0,f)/netbsd at the boot prompt,
and brought the system up multi-user and everything(*).  
(The last time I did this was around the 1.2 release,
when I used this technique to repartition my hard drive,
including resizing the wd0a and swap partitions.)


(*) CAVEATS:
  /etc/fstab will probably need modification:  /dev/wd0a will no
longer be the root.

  On i386 with "swap generic" kernels, swap won't work, because
swapgeneric.c looks at partition (root+1) for swap, i.e., wd0g
in my example of booting off of wd0f.  So either hack
swapgeneric.c to look at partition with minor # 1 (wd0b) for
swap, or don't use "swap generic" kernels when booting off of
nonnormal partitions.  

  In addition, on my 1048-cyl IDE drive, a partition
partially past the 1024th-cylinder may have part of the kernel
beyond the region the boot-code/BIOS(?) can reach,
leading to hanging during the spinning | display.  

  Other hardware/architectures may have similar gotchas....

  Brian
-- 
Brian Grayson (bgrayson@ece.utexas.edu)
Graduate Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin
Office:  ENS 406       (512) 471-8011
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