You either had a pre-July version of the HOWTO or you were skimming the
directions a bit too fast.

>From section 2.5 of the HOWTO:

  Then you'll need to place the NetBSD kernel image in this directory.
  Uncompress the the netbsd-12G-VS.gz file you obtained earlier and copy
  it into the file named /netboot/netbsd-vax/netbsd.

  # gzip -dc netbsd-12G-VS.gz > /netboot/netbsd-vax/netbsd

That's a 1.2G kernel, and at least on the VAXstations it seems to be 
fairly reliable.  There are older kernels in the netboot.tar.gz, your
should ignore those -- all you need from the netboot.tar.gz is the mopboot
bootloader.  They made a lot of changes in 1.2G with swap so that would
explain your swapping problems.

I should probably assemble my own bundle of bootloader and kernels to
eliminate some of the confusion that might arise with netboot.tar.gz.


On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Scott Statton N1GAK wrote:
 
> Thanks for the help, Brian, and David ... I now am successfully
> booting two VS2000s -- however, I have yet to get swapping to work
> correctly, so the machines run for up to ten to twenty minutes before
> crapping out ...
[...]
> I added a couple of 'echo's to the Appropriate places to make sure
> what was failing ... 
>
>     About to swapctl
>     Bad system call - core dumped
>     Just swapctled

There's that swap problem.  The latest NetBSD/vax snapshot on
ftp.netbsd.org really needs that 1.2G kernel. :-)


> Here's the contents of ka410's /etc/fstab (I replaced
> throbber.cluon.com with bootserver for readability here...)
> 
> 
>     bootserver:/netboot/1/root  /       nfs     rw 0 0 
>     bootserver:/netboot/1/swap  none    swap    sw,nfsmntpt=/swap.file
>     bootserver:/netboot/usr     /usr    nfs     rw 0 0 
>     bootserver:/netboot/home    /home   nfs     rw 0 0
> 
> 
> on the NFS server before boot-time, /netboot/1/root/swap.file is an
> empty directory;  after swapctl runs, from the NFS server side,
> root/swap.file is still an empty directory, but from the VAX side,
> it's a 16Meg suitable-for-swapping file ... (mode is -rw------T)

Yeah, that's how things should probably look.  I'm guessing the only
problem is the lack of running a 1.2G kernel.  Once you've booted with
that kernel, you should be able to run the swapctl command and get
something like the following:

  foovax% swapctl -l
  Device      1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Priority
  /dev/??         16384        0    16384     0%    0
  foovax%

I still get the occassional panic on my VS3100's but it usually only
happens after a few days. But I also haven't compiled NetBSD-current since
about two weeks ago.  There have been some very ugly reports from people
trying to run 1.2G on MicroVAX II's and other non-VAXstation platforms.
I've yet to hear of any significant problems with either VS3100 or VS2000
machines, at least in diskless configurations.

-brian.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian D. Chase         Systems Coordinator        brian.chase@carpediem.com
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