[1353] in NetBSD-Development
2nd IDE bus, installation, boot floppies, boot loader
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jmmikkel@MIT.EDU)
Fri Aug 2 16:45:44 1996
From: jmmikkel@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 16:43:29 -0400
To: netbsd-dev@MIT.EDU
Cc: jmmikkel@MIT.EDU
I figured I'd install netbsd on my new hard disk, so that I could
learn about it.
I've learned.
My disk happens to be the second disk on the _second_ IDE bus. The
SIPB kernels are not compiled to include support for the second IDE
bus. Why is this? So I went to zorp and built a kernel. (I won't flame
about the difficulty of building an install disk without all the right
bits. Well, I won't flame more than this. :)
And lo, it found my hard disk. Then the install process promptly
installed a kernel which would not recognize the very disk it was
installed onto. Through many contortions (including the aid of zorp) I
replaced that kernel.
Then I wondered, how am I to boot to netbsd? Installing netbsd's boot
loader, which as far as I could tell, can only be done via dos anyway
(where should I be looking?) is not currently an acceptable answer. I
can't boot via floppy, because nowhere in the install process is there
a provision for me to make one! (And docs about it? Where?)
Figuring on managing with the install floppy, I _finally_ found some
!*documentation*! in
/afs/sipb.mit.edu/project/netbsd/release/netbsd-1.1/source/src/sys/arch/i386/boot
... which told me that the boot loader uses the BIOS. Well, my BIOS
can't find the second IDE bus.
So... since I know there are a lot of deficient BIOSes around, and
this is probably a fairly common way, I guess that netbsd has decided
that those of us like me are just screwed.
Anyway, assuming that I decide to take nearly everything out of the
computer (which it will take for a hardware fix) so that my BIOS can
see my disk, I _still_ can't tell how I am to install the boot stuff
onto the netbsd partition. In concept, I can do this. But I have no
boot floppy, and the instructions are incomplete at best.
Please tell me if there's something I can do so that I can actually
boot to this infernal operating system, preferably without a boot
floppy... Oh, and you have 13 days before I go off the net.
Joanne
