On Fri, 5 Jan 1996, Mauricio Tavares wrote:

> 	I am still having loads of fun with booting up the 3/50 diskless 
> so I can install NetBSD in its drive.  Here are more questions to my list:
> 
> 	o Once netboot loads, what exactly does it do?  Looking at the 
> 	  diskless(8) man page, it says it tries to get again the IP address
> 	  using rarp.  Well, how does it broadcast its plead?  How different
> 	  would it be from the one made by the PROM?

  It is supposed to mount the kernel and root filesystem via NFS.  
Information is retrieve from the (rpc.)bootparmd server

> 	o Once it gets the IP address, its the netbsd-rd file the 
> 	  equivalent of the vmunix kernel?  What is the difference?

  No, it is the equivalent of the munix kernel, which is basically a 
ram-disk kernel

> 	o What about miniroot?  Where should it be?  What is it supposed 
> 	  to do?

  The mini-root contains all the install stuff.  It is copied into the 
swap space on your drive, and you boot from it to extract and install all 
the rest of the stuff.

Tom