Booting from an alternate root filesystem

David Alix 9531alix%ucsbuxa at hub.ucsb.edu
Thu Dec 20 09:02:10 AEST 1990


I have a Sun 3/50 running SunOs 4.0.3.  It has the standard Micropolis
SCSI disk that came with it from Sun, and a CDC Wren V 94181-702
daisy-chained from the Micropolis.  The "Format" command gives the
following information about the disks:

        0. sd0 at si0 slave 0
           sd0: <Micropolis 1325 cyl 1022 alt 2 hd 8 sec 17>
        1. sd1 at si0 slave 8
           sd1: <CDC Wren V 94181-702 cyl 1110 alt 2 hd 15 sec 70>

I have been trying to set up an alternate, bootable root file system on
the second disk.  I copied all the files from sd0a onto sd1a using
restore, then used installboot to update a boot block on sd1a.

I then expected to be able to boot from sd1a with the command:

  >b sd(0,8,0)vmunix

but instead get the error message:

  		 SCSI: select failed
   		Device not found

Thinking the device might be one instead of eight, I tried booting with:

   >b sd(0,1,0)vmunix

I then got the error message

  		sd: error 4 0 0 0
   		.
   		.
   		.
  		(repeated many times)

   		Waiting for disk to spin up

When I boot from sd0a, I have no trouble accessing any space on sd1a.  Is
there some step I've missed in setting up the alternative root directory?
Is there a problem with trying to boot from a daisy-chained SCSI disk?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

David Alix
Computer Center, Univ. of Calif., Santa Barbara
Postmaster, ucsbuxa
9531alix at ucsbuxa.bitnet     or    9531alix at ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu



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