[Thank goodness the Aussies are on the same time zone as my mutant hours]

>>  At this point I don't know what to do.  Typing "? yields
>>    
>>  use one of : raid0[a-h] raid1[a-h] raid2[a-h] raid3[a-h] hme0 wd0[a-h] halt
>>  root device:
> 
> hmm.. it it was from, I'd expect to see a "cd0" or something available..

So would I  :-)

The person who made the CD image might want to answer this; slice 5 on the
CD-R image looks like a NetBSD (mini?  micro?)root filesystem of some sort.

> The problem here is probably that the CD driver doesn't call the MI disklabel
> reader code, so Sun labels are ignored on CD-ROMs, so it can't see any
> partitions?

Could be ...

> Perhaps it (netbsd/sparc64) doesn't know about booting from CD-ROM yet...
> we do not use the md0-style install yet.

OK.

In the absence of any info to the contrary, I figured maybe it would dump me
into the same "microroot" installer as the regular SPARC port, using the "md0"
RAM disk stuff ...

>> What now?  Why is the kernel choking on reading the internal EIDE hard disk?
> 
> This is the same problem that I and others have reported on the pciide driver.

I see.

> I've not seen it for CD-ROMs, but I've never booted from a CD-ROM.  It happens
> when the OFW driver touches the pciide controller before NetBSD does, on a 
> certain class of machine, with a certain class of disks.. (this also affects
> some macppc machines).  I have a U5 that will boot properly from the internal
> Sun-supplied 4Gb IDE drive, but will not boot from a Seagate 15G drive (even
> if I replace the internal drive completely).

Well, part of this is academic interest only.  I have the boot disk set up to
function as a Solaris 7 AutoClient, and what I want to do is to move my current
(SPARCstation 20/71) NetBSD setup onto a single 9 Gb SCSI disk and dual-boot
the system, with NetBSD on the external SCSI disk.  (Is that well supported?
What's the state of support for the Symbios 53c875 Fast/Ultra/Wide dual-channel
PCI bus SCSI card for Ultras - the "glm"/ncr53c8xx - in NetBSD 1.5?  I have to
steal one of these cards from someplace, but once I have it, I'm going to be
ready to do the full-blown install ... )

>>    Why are there no "md0[a-h]" and/or "cd0[a-h]" choices for "root device",
>> as one might expect?
> 
> There should be cd0, but I'm fairly sure this won't work right anyway..

OK.  So it sounds like doing a manual install from Solaris is about the only
way to install on the Ultra, despite the fact that we have a bootable sparc64
CD-ROM?

>> I realize there are "traditional" methods of installing (load a miniroot and
>> boot from it; or set it all up manually from Solaris, as per the INSTALL
>> file), but I was really looking forward to being able to do the full install
>> while being booted off of the CD-ROM ... (also, there's no "miniroot.fs" as
>> per the INSTALL document, I don't know what to do with what's in "misc" -
>> "ofwboot" et al. - and finally, there's "ramdisk.fs.gz" but you can't use
>> that from a CD-R ... )
> 
> Please remember that the sparc64 port is very new, and installers are some
> of the most immature parts of the system.  There are much more important
> tasks we've been working on... :-)

That's fine.  Just look at this from the perspective of, hey, there are going
to be some people wanting to move to Ultras and use the port, and the more
information about how to install it the better.  (For example - if there's no
miniroot.fs, rip out the mention of it in NetBSD-1.5/sparc64/INSTALL*, for
starters.  In general, explain the various installation subdirectories better.
What's "bootfs" on the 1.5 SPARC port?  It's not mentioned in the INSTALL*
files - see "NetBSD/sparc subdirectory structure".  Discuss ramdisk vs.
miniroot vs. bootfs.   That sort of thing.)

I guess what I'm saying, ultimately, is - "Hi, I just got an Ultra, I'm new
to the port, I'm used to loading miniroot.fs and booting from that to do my
SPARC port installs/upgrades, but that's not present in the UltraSPARC port,
so what the heck do I do now, given the various options available?".  :-)

	- Greg