I'm setting up RAIDFrame on an old Sparc 2 as an experiment. What I'm
trying to understand is the booting procedure and how this will impact
the way in which the kernel is installed, etc.

I know that on NetBSD/i386, we have to create a small 4.2BSD partition
for the secondary bootblocks to reside upon, since the primary boot
can't talk to RAID partitions directly (yet). Figuring that this was the
same scenario on a Sun, I created a disklabel as follows:

3 partitions:
#        size    offset     fstype  [fsize bsize cpg/sgs]
 a:      2440         0     4.2BSD   1024  8192   136   # (Cyl.    0 -
3)
 b:   4107560      2440       RAID                      # (Cyl.    4 -
6737*)
 c:   4110000         0     unused      0     0         # (Cyl.    0 -
6737*)

and did a:

	athena# mount /dev/sd1a /mnt
	athena# cp /usr/mdec/boot /mnt
	athena# installboot /dev/rsd1c /usr/mdec/bootxx /boot

Ok, so when I do "boot /sbus/esp@0,800000/sd@4,0" from the PROM, the
secondary bootloader rightly complains that it can't find any kernels.
Does this mean that the "a" partition above has to be large enough to
contain a kernel, and that I should install a kernel there as well? What
about /etc? What other parts need to reside there?

My question is basically this: How much of a system do I need to install
on that "a" partition to get to the point where the box will remount the
autoconfigured RAID root partition over top of the temporary root?

Also, am I correct in my understanding that the partition containing the
secondary bootblocks on a Sparc *MUST* be the first partition on the
disk? i.e. this wouldn't work if I made "f" to be the same size and
offset as "a" instead. Or does it have to do with the partition that is
physically at the beginning of the disk and is irrespective of the
disklabel.

- Julian

-- 
[    Julian C. Dunn <jdunn@aquezada.com> * <julian@dreaming.org>    ]
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