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Manuel Bouyer | 17 Oct 2011 22:05

Re: booting the Gdium

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 09:24:36PM +0200, ??? wrote:
> > No (in fact, if it doesn't find its root device, it's probably because
> > it can't get anything from the pmon variables. It does find its root
> > device on the fuulong). But you can build a kernel where the root device is
> > hardcoded: in the config file, change:
> > config          netbsd  root on ? type ?
> > to match your root device, e.g.
> > config          netbsd  root on sd0 type ?
> >
> > That is neat! So, in fact NetBSD scans available media for BSD-style
> partitions upon boot? That is sweet!

Yes it does, but it doesn't use this to select automatically a boot device,
only to (eventually) find a boot partition once the boot device is
known.

> 
> It is however trivial to configure new variables in PMON, so if you could
> quote some that Fuloong uses, that could also prove useful.

The problem is that, from what I understood, gdium's pmon is so brocken
it's impossible to read pmon variables or command line from the os.

> 
> Am I correct in concluding that NetBSD will not find its rootfs when that is
> placed on an ext2-formatted partition? Since the kernel seems so flexible
> in locating its rootfs, I am betting that was what I observed this weekend.

if you use 'type ?' the root filesystem can be on any filesystem type that
the kernel knwos about. So ext2 should work.
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bao.mengqian | 18 Oct 2011 22:22
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Re: booting the Gdium

On 22:05 17 Oct 11, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 09:24:36PM +0200, ??? wrote:
> > > No (in fact, if it doesn't find its root device, it's probably because
> > > it can't get anything from the pmon variables. It does find its root
> > > device on the fuulong). But you can build a kernel where the root device is
> > > hardcoded: in the config file, change:
> > > config          netbsd  root on ? type ?
> > > to match your root device, e.g.
> > > config          netbsd  root on sd0 type ?
> > >
> > > That is neat! So, in fact NetBSD scans available media for BSD-style
> > partitions upon boot? That is sweet!
> 
> Yes it does, but it doesn't use this to select automatically a boot device,
> only to (eventually) find a boot partition once the boot device is
> known.
> 
> > 
> > It is however trivial to configure new variables in PMON, so if you could
> > quote some that Fuloong uses, that could also prove useful.
> 
> The problem is that, from what I understood, gdium's pmon is so brocken
> it's impossible to read pmon variables or command line from the os.
> 
> > 
> > Am I correct in concluding that NetBSD will not find its rootfs when that is
> > placed on an ext2-formatted partition? Since the kernel seems so flexible
> > in locating its rootfs, I am betting that was what I observed this weekend.
> 
> if you use 'type ?' the root filesystem can be on any filesystem type that
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Manuel Bouyer | 18 Oct 2011 22:19

Re: booting the Gdium

On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 10:22:53PM +0200, bao.mengqian <at> gmail.com wrote:
> >
> Then I change my hypothesis to NetBSD not recognizing its rootfs when it is
> installed on a non-BSD partition type. Since I prepared the "boot disk" on a
> Linux system, I was unable to create the BSD-style partitions hierarchy which
> is native to BSD. My next move is to find a way to create a flash drive which
> holds one ext2-formatted, Linux-style partition  to hold the kernel (for PMON)
> and besides that the BSD-style partitions which will hold the rootfs. 

The install kernel should allow you to do that, but you'll have to do it by
hand. there's no support in sysinst for that yet.

--

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer <at> antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--
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