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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!serv.hinet.net!news-peer.nctu.edu.tw!news.nctu.edu.tw!spring.edu.tw!news.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!news-ber1.dfn.de!news-fra1.dfn.de!si-nic!engel From: engel@numerik.fb6.uni-siegen.de (Michael Engel) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Subject: Re: NetBSD on DECstations ? Date: 2 Feb 1997 22:34:43 GMT Organization: Computer Center, University of Siegen, Germany Lines: 37 Message-ID: <5d34q3$hth@si-nic.hrz.uni-siegen.de> References: <5cvibj$h6g@ulysses.noc.ntua.gr> NNTP-Posting-Host: hilbert.numerik.math.uni-siegen.de X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL9] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:5286 Yiorgos Adamopoulos (adamo@ajax.noc.ntua.gr) wrote: : Has anybody tested NetBSD on DECstations? I have five of them running : Ultrix4.3 and would like to change to NetBSD. Hmmm, well, I spent last Thursday and Friday trying to install NetBSD on a DecStation 5000/200 here. Here's my experiences: [I used NetBSD-1.2 from netbsd.wifo.uni-mannheim.de] - As I had no NetBSD helper machine, my only option was to boot the 5000/200 via network. This worked just fine using a Linux machine as tftp/bootp server. - The booted kernel didn't want to mount it's filesystems, so I read the installation instructions :-) and found out that the kernel does a bootparams request for its root and swap location. After compiling bootparamd and realizing that NetBSD wants a non-emtpy swap file ;), NetBSD came up in single user mode. Fine. Btw., I used the base.tar.gz-package as NFS-root. - Next I tried to partition and label the hard disk (a 425 MB Quantum) with disklabel. Here the trouble started. That d**n disklabel program doesn't seem to write correct disklabels. Every time I try to read a written label back, I get "No label on disk" :-(. Needless to say, I also wasn't able to install a bootloader. The funny thing is that I was able to newfs the partitions, mount them and unpack the distribution on it. But on next reboot, my "g" (/usr) partition was gone. If anyone can shed some light on what's going on here, I'd be happy ! - disklabel works fine on our VAX3500, so I don't really understand what is wrong here ... [no, I can't use the VAX as a helper machine to disklabel the Quantum drive, unless someone has a Q-Bus SCSI controller for me :-) - this VAX is currently running off two 8" Fujitsu Eagle SMD drives !]. So, I'm back with Ultrix 4.4, as we wanted to get the machine running (it will be our student's WWW server here at Siegen Univ. !). I'd rather prefer to run NetBSD, but wasn't able to resolve the problems ... regards, Michael Engel (engel@unix-ag.uni-siegen.de)