Subject: Re: Again: Booting a Vax-Server 3100 with NetBSD-1.4
To: David Brownlee <abs@anim.dreamworks.com>
From: Anders Magnusson <ragge@ludd.luth.se>
List: port-vax
Date: 06/19/1999 17:53:45
> 	The filesystem should not be a problem - if the pmax kernel
> 	has options FFS_EI (see options(4)) it can make a filesystem
> 	in vax byte order. The boot blocks are more interesting,
> 	though it should be possible to enable the code for vax
> 	partitions on the pmax. It would be easier to netboot the vax
> 	from the pmax though :)
> 
Well, both pmax and vax are little endian, and the pmax have its disklabel
at the same place as vax, but the boot block layout is different.

To make a filesystem from a decstation I would assume that this would
be a simple way (even if netboot is simpler :-)

# disklabel -W sd0		Enable writing to boot sector
# dd if=hpboot of=/dev/rsd0c	Write the vax boot sector, destroys old label
# disklabel sd0 > /tmp/hej	Save proto disklabel
# disklabel -R sd0 /tmp/hej	Write fresh disklabel
# disklabel -e -r sd0		Edit new disklabel
# newfs sd0blah...		Newfs the new partitions.

This is totally untested but it may work :-)

-- Ragge