Subject: Re: Booting a UWS1/170E from external disk on esp
To: Steven Grunza <steven_grunza@ieee.org>
From: Eduardo Horvath <eeh@turbolinux.com>
List: port-sparc
Date: 09/13/2000 08:46:07
On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, Steven Grunza wrote:

> So I've got my Ultra1 clone setup as follows:
> 
>                   |-----|
> hme ------------->| HUB |
> SBus le --------->| HUB |
> port-i386 PC ---->| HUB |
>                   |-----|
> 
> fas -------->internal ST32171W 2 GB disk ID 0
>        \---->internal PX-12TS CD-ROM ID 6

Fas is not currently supported, but I suppose you know that.

> SBus esp---->external 2 GB disk ID 5
> 
> The port-i386 PC has the same type of external SCSI connector as the SBus
> esp card, so....
> 
> 1)  How would I configure the NetBSD-1.4.2 PC to write the necessary boot
> blocks and files to the external disk (fixing endian problems, if any) so
> that I could then plug the drive into the Ultra1 clone and boot from the
> external disk?

The boot block is easy:  

	dd bs=512 skip=1 if=bootblk of=/dev/<foo> count=15

Partitioning and ufs filesystem is more difficult.  I know there was a
sunlabel program floating around somewhere.

If you have a Solaris CD, you can boot from that and use that for
partitioning and generating the ufs image.  

Or, if you get the disk partitioned and can figure out how to get the 1.4
machine to recognize the partitions, you should be able to newfs with the
`-B be' option to generate a big-endian filesystem.  If your kernel has
the FFS_IE option should then be able to mount the filesystem and unpack
the archives.

But, the easiest way to do this if you have bootable Solaris on that
machine is:

	Partition using Solaris.

	Use `dd' to write the latest miniroot image to the disk's swap
	partition.

	Copy the kernel and ofwboot to the root partition.

	Reboot with the `-a' option.

	Tell the Solaris bootloader to load `/ofwboot'.

	Tell the NetBSD bootloader to load `/netbsd'.

	Tell the NetBSD kernel to use the miniroot (e.g. `sd1*').

	Then use the miniroot to newfs the root filesystem and install the
	packages, possibly from another partition.

You could also netboot, but networking on SBus don't work so good.

> 2)  What is the correct OpenBoot 3.0 incantation for booting off the second
> disk?  My SS1 would be simply:  boot sd(1,5,0)netbsd
> 
> A probe-scsi-all (with the external disk not attached) gave:
> /sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@e,8800000
> Target 0
>   Unit 0  DISK ......
> Target 6
>   Unit 0  Removable Read Only device .......
> 
> /sbus@1f,0/dma@1,81000/esp@1,8000
> 
> 
> ok

You can simply do:

	ok boot /sbus@1f,0/dma@1,81000/esp@1,8000/sd@1:a

Look at what you have for devailiases.  You should have devailaises for
each disk that could be attached to the onboard scsi controller.  You may
need to create some for your SBus scsi controller.  Then you can use
something like:

	boot disk1

Or if you want to specify a particular partition:

	boot disk1:e

And if you want to specify a specific file to boot:

	boot disk1:e /netbsd.test

And then ther are the parameters:

	boot disk1:e /netbsd.test -adsDvV

etc.



Eduardo Horvath