What's magic about "setup"

[Joe Michel-Angelo]

by geaclib!lethe!dave at uunet.uu.net:
> What is magic about the construction of the sun root filesystem?  Two
> different individuals here in Tranna have had the doubtful pleasure of
> building root filesystem with mkfs (or newfs), populating it with restore
> or tar and having the system hang somewhere in the booting sequence.  Who
> can tell me what "setup" knows that I don't?

"setup"'s only magic in 3.X is that it can partition the disk for you
(actually, it can make drive lables...). 

When rebuilding production 3/260's, I simply partition the disk via diag
and then make the machine a network client using a kernel w/ root on nd
(config root on nd swap on nd) ... the kernel also contains the xy and xt
drivers controller info. Once booted, it's a simple matter of "MAKEDEV
xy0" and loading a root, pub, and user dump tape (ps: dump/restore is a
better choice in this matter) and then install a boot block on xy0a.  (cd
/usr/mdec; installboot ...)

Restoring nd parts. is another matter. You can restore each individually
(then edit /nd/etc/rc.boot to change hostname=) or do your initial restore
as a dd of xy0c from your master copy host. (dd will copy drive lables
.... probably a good idea to have the same type drives on on both
machines...)

All a root partition needs is:

	boot block
	/boot
	/vmunix
	/etc/init
	/bin/sh  --> /pub/bin/sh

	maybe a few dirs as well...

Hey! Me think me know what your problem is....

Me thinks that when you installed / with tar, you also have /pub mounted.
In this case, /pub files will be placed in the /pub partition. 

When booting, /pub isn't initially mounted and because of your restore
method, the /pub on xy0a contains no files.... /pub should contain a
"basic set" of programs since /bin is linked to /pub and when booting,
/bin/sh is very required. This is easily overlooked...

Try using dump/restore to restore your root and install the boot block...
-- 
	Joe Angelo -- Senior Systems Engineer/Systems Manager
	Teknekron Software Systems, Palo Alto 415-325-1025
	joe at tss.com - uunet!tekbspa!joe - tekbspa!joe at uunet.uu.net