>From: "Bryan A. Ignatow" <ignatow@sprintparanet.com>
>
>Ok... from all that I have read I should be able to use the SCSI disks on
>my VS3100/M76 using the stock 1.3 #1 kernel.  I have two RZ24's currently
>in the box and the system is fully functional when netbooted.  The two
>drives also check out with the TEST 75 formatter.
>
>The question I have is "how do I get them to work?".  I tried to play with
>disklabel and some other seemingly related items but have had no luck.
>Does someone have a set of steps that will get the disks labeled, boot
>block placed on disk, and such so that I can run newfs and get the system
>booting from them?

OK, this is all from memory, but it should get you on the right track.
Pardon me if I make any silly mistakes.  I haven't played with my vax
in a while.

First of all, you need to be sure you're in single user mode:
# shutdown now

Then you need to produce a disklabel protofile somehow.  One way to do
this is to read the in-core disklabel for the disk:
# disklabel sd0 > label

Edit the label to suit your taste.  Remember to leave partition c: as
the whole disk, add an a: partition for root, an e: (or whatever) for
for /usr, and a b: for swap.  Here's a sample table from a random
non-VAX machine:
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:    66400        0      4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.    0 - 199)
  b:   132800    66400        swap                        # (Cyl.  200 - 599)
  c:  1034844        0      unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 3116)
  e:   835644   199200      4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.  600 - 3116)

Write the protofile to the disk's disk label.  Remember to use the
"-r" flag to write directly to disk:
# disklabel -R -r sd0 label

Now that you have a real disk label, you should be able to edit it
interactively, if you want:
# disklabel -e sd0

Newfs the new partitions:
# newfs /dev/rsd0a
# newfs /dev/rsd0e

Next, write some boot blocks:
# cd /usr/mdec
# disklabel -B -b xxboot -s bootxx sd0

Mount the root partititon:
# mount /dev/sd0a /mnt

Copy the boot program to the a partition:
# cp /boot /mnt/boot

If you don't have /boot, fetch it from the distribution and install
it.  Or build and install it from the source:
# cd /sys/arch/vax/boot
# make cleandir && make depend && make && make install
# cp /boot /mnt/boot

At this point you can safely go multi-user if you want.  Install the
system files to the disk, reboot, and play :-)

Good luck,
entropy

--
entropy -- it's not just a good idea, it's the second law.