my i386 disk is like
rock% df
Filesystem  1K-blocks     Used     Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/wd0a      655959    55362    567799     8%    /
/dev/wd0e    54908827 15478174  36685211    29%    /usr

I would not consider a large boot area a requirement. Is is?

The vaxen net boot off a large disk. Might a diskless one have an issue? 
I am not kernal coder so I am unaware of internals.

Cheers
Joe

der Mouse wrote:

>>>I HAVE BEEN AN RUNNING AN OLD COMPAQ 266 WITH  A CHEAP 60GB MAXTOR
>>>DRIVE FOR A SOME TIME ON NETBSD 1.6 WITH NO ISSUES.
>>>      
>>>
>>There are no issues with other architectures; just VAX.
>>    
>>
>
>I wouldn't go that far.  I've seen related issues with the sparc and
>i386 ports.
>
>  
>
>>Although some other architectures are limited about the size of the
>>partition which is used for booting.
>>    
>>
>
>In at least one case - the sparc port, and only some machines (I
>suspect it's a ROM rev issue) - the partition _size_ is irrelevant;
>what matters is where the blocks are.  All the blocks accessed before
>the kernel gains control must be in the first 1G of the drive.
>(Arranging this is rather difficult unless the whole partition fits
>within that range, but it can be done - and in particular, I have seen
>it happen by coincidence; just because "it's always worked" doesn't, by
>itself, mean the issue isn't waiting to bite you.)  This is the
>6-byte-vs-10-byte CDB issue.
>
>On the i386 I understand the issues less, but suspect something similar
>is at work; I know that I've had it fail with a single big partition
>covering most of the disk and work with a small boot partition at the
>beginning and then a big root partition.  (This is with IDE drives;
>with SCSI drives, of course, the same CDB size issue potentially
>arises.)
>
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