> I'm setting up RAIDFrame on an old Sparc 2 as an experiment.  [...]

Most of this I can't speak to.  But...

> 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.

As far as I know, neither of these is relevant.  If it isn't the "a"
partition then you need to add the partition letter to the boot
command, as in "boot /sbus/esp@0,800000/sd@4,0:f".  Where this
partition (whichever it may be) is on the disk makes no difference,
except that for some ROM revs on some machines all the blocks making up
the secondary boot and kernel must be in the first 1G of the disk
(which usually means that the partition must be in the first 1G).  I
don't know whether the 2 is such a machine.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B