At 11:54 AM 12/17/2000 -0500, NetBSD Bob wrote:
>Well, I have the sources if we need a lookiesee, and I can unroll a
>tape and see what the bits are.  The first several files are as you
>describe, but I don't remember if a miniroot followed the kernel or not.

The "Makefile" for building the tape is in src/distrib/vax/tk50 and that 
make file specifies that first the file "../inst/bootroot-$(REV).fs" gets 
copied to the tape, then "../inst/miniroot-$(REV).fs" gets copied, followed 
by all the sets as compressed tar files.

However, in the ../inst directory, the Makefile there is incomplete. It has 
a target for miniroot-$(REV) but not one for bootroot-$(REV). Further, my 
attempt to have _it_ build miniroot-$(REV).fs was unsuccessful, however 
there was a miniroot that was built as part of the netboot process.

I have ascertained that booting from tape on the VAX is actually fairly 
straight forward (at least on MSCP type tape controllers). The first image 
is loaded into memory and then it gets jumped to.

Given that this second stage tape booter is probably not _too_ bright (it 
should be a variation on the boot program) it may be possible to kludge 
this by using the 1.4.x booter, and the 1.5 miniroot to do the right thing.

Alternatively, we could probably hack the existing boot such that if the 
boot device was 'Mxx' then instead of trying its sequence of netbsd images 
(which won't work on a tape anyway) just load the 'next' image (which would 
be the ram based miniroot) and start that up. That would presumably leave 
the tape positioned past the install kernel and looking at the first tar set.

 > And, how do I hook up a CD to an MVII?.... not so easy.

You user an RQD50 and an RRD40 :-)

>For the sake of discussion, and keeping the low-ram capability for
>oldeVAXen around, should we rewrite a VAX specific low-end tape
>install that is more traditional in nature rather than late-model
>sysinstall based?  It would require we keep a second VAX-specific
>tapeboot readme for just that instance.  But, I sense that a
>minimal traditional install might be good.

This is essentially what I propose but you could still do some sysinstall 
type stuff.

>Also, for the sake of discussion, can any sort of tapeboot run off
>9 track reel scsi tape drives?

As far as the VAX is concerned if they are a TMSCP device they all "look" 
the same.

>I have a couple of those that would
>be nice to use, in lieu of a cd boot or a TK50 boot.  I am not sure
>what differences in coding would be required, but it probably would
>not be too much.

Might take a couple of tapes, the CD image is 53Mbytes

--Chuck