NetBSD questions...

[Atheus]

How can I prevent init from creating /dev on mfs when it does not find one mounted? I'm netbooting a sparcstation and I've created the filesystem from scratch on Linux, but I need to run makedev from the sparc itself once booted.

Here's the tutorial I used:

http://netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/files.html

Under the heading "It's time to boot up your diskless machine!" it says the system should ask me for my terminal type when I finish booting, but I get 'warning, no /dev/console' then 'init: creating /dev on mfs' or something similar.

I'm pretty sure it did ask me for the terminal on my first boot, and I'm pretty sure I ran makedev, but I must have done something wrong because it hasn't been created... is there a variable that means 'this is the first boot'?

 

[Nothinman]

What's wrong with the /dev that it creates?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Did you boot into single user mode? Can you not create a non-mfs dev after it boots?

 

[Atheus]

What's wrong with the /dev that it creates?

Well I'm not sure if there is anything wrong with the /dev it creates, but that's not the way the tutorial says it should happen, and I get all kinds of errors on booting and can't get into multi-user mode. I'm kinda just going through them systematically - the first one is 'warning, no /dev/console' and 'init: creating /dev on mfs', followed by 'fstab, 6: missing fields' then a lot of 'permission denied' which are probably due to the fstab errors and the fact it's not mounting /usr.

Did you boot into single user mode? Can you not create a non-mfs dev after it boots?

I am booting single user mode. I tried sharing dev over NFS from the Linux server and mounting it seperately as /foo on the client, but it wouldn't let me run makedev in /foo - 'operation not permitted'.

 

[n0cmonkey]

You should be able to create /dev/console on the NFS server using chroot inside of the client's /dev.

I don't think /dev should be its own "partition," it should be inside of /..

 

[Atheus]

You should be able to create /dev/console on the NFS server using chroot inside of the client's /dev.

With Linux mknod? OK, I'll try that. What options should I use?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Atheus

You should be able to create /dev/console on the NFS server using chroot inside of the client's /dev.

With Linux mknod? OK, I'll try that. What options should I use?

I'm not sure. I'd guess you would have to use NetBSD's MAVEDEV...

 

[Atheus]

Unfortunately my bootserver is Linux. Can I create a /dev/console with a hex editor or something?

 

[n0cmonkey]

I don't know really, I've only netbooted OpenBSD off of OpenBSD.

 

[n0cmonkey]

You could try booting from one of the miniroot type files (miniroot.fs maybe, I'm not entirely familiar with netbsd), mounting the NFS share RW under /mnt or something.

You could then run MAKEDEV for at least /dev/console there (chrooting into /mnt).

 

[Atheus]

Nah I tried the miniroot image, someone on IRC mentioned it, but it's too big for the sparcstation to pull off tftp.

Might have to install from scratch I guess. Thanks anyway n0cmonkey.

 

[n0cmonkey]

You could try OpenBSD's bsd.rd. It might be compatible enough.

It looks like rootfs.tgz might be a file worth looking at too...