Hi all,
Is there a step-by-step guide for installing netbsd on a nextstation color? I reviewed the netbsd next68k website but it is pretty bare in terms of documentation. Is there a way of creating a hard drive image using Previous and then booting it on the nextstation using a zuluscsi?
Thanks!
NetBSD for black hardware had a number of serious regression bugs since release 5.2.3. Thanks to NetBSD/68k maintainer Izumi Tsutsui and "our" Andreas Grabher (of Previous fame), these bugs should be fixed in NetBSD 10. The final version of NetBSD 10 is not yet available, but RC2 was published two weeks ago:
http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.0_RC2/next68k/ (
http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.0_RC2/next68k/)
I haven't found time to test RC2 so far, so I would be interested to hear about your experience. The easiest way to run the installer is probably to netboot the NeXT via bootp/tftp.
There's a document describing the installation at
http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.0_RC2/next68k/INSTALL.html (
http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.0_RC2/next68k/INSTALL.html)
After some twists and turns I was able to netboot NetBSD 10 RC2 on the nextstation (using an old macbook pro as the server). It runs in multiuser and the system appears to "work".
I installed netbsd on the hard drive, but the system won't boot. The bootloader kicks in when I boot from sd()netbsd but it gets stuck trying to init NFS.
This is what I see:
---
NeXT>bsd()netbsd
boot: sd(0, 0, 0)netbsd
booting SCSI target 1, lun 0
>> NetBSD/next68k BOOT [1.8 (Mon Jan 1 14:04:52 UTC 2024) #2]
>> type 3, non-turbo
nfs_open: must mount first.
open sd()netbsd: Device not configured
load of sd()netbsd: Device not configured
---
I suspect that the bootloader and/or kernel is hardwired to netboot. Or, perhaps, I have broken something.
Thoughts?
Cheers!
Ok, a quick follow up for those following along.
I have NetBSD booting from the hard disk. My problem was that the hard disk image was corrupted when I installed the bootloader. I repeated the process, but left some space at the beginning of the disk (like OS42) and it worked.
Now I have the amusing problem that I can't bring up the network when booted from the hard drive. Clearly networking works (I netbooted originally) but the system installed on the hard drive can't reach the network. Next thing to work out.
Cheers!
That great progress! I wonder if the booted kernel uses the wrong network interface (BNC instead of TP or the other way round)?
Hi Cuby,
Ok, I have it working. I made the following changes:
1.) I created an /etc/ifconfig.xe0 that changes the media type to 10baseT/UTP
2.) I modified the dhcpcd.conf to only operate with IPV4 (ipv4only), disable IPV4LL (noipv4ll) and remove the mtu hook (nohook mtu).
The MTU issue took awhile to figure out. Finally I found a hint in this old posting:
https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2013/02/05/msg003023.html (note this is on the i386 list, jaj).
When dhcpcd starts in debug mode I see that IPV4 works fine, but when it got to IPV6 or IPV4LL it would cause errors and the network would eventually get itself into a "network is down" state from which there was no recovery.
With these modifications the system boots, calls dhcpcd and is ready to go when you get to the login prompt.
A major issue we have with netbsd at the moment is that the SCSI performance is atrocious (compared to NeXTSTEP). I feel like the driver must not be taking advantage of some of the features of the esp100A.
It would also be nice to get X11 working. I see mention of a port on the NetBSD/next68k page but I have not found the code.
Cheers!
Quote from: astromike on January 16, 2024, 02:14:15 PMAfter some twists and turns I was able to netboot NetBSD 10 RC2 on the nextstation (using an old macbook pro as the server). It runs in multiuser and the system appears to "work".
Hi
@astromike , was one of your twists or turns getting the boot.netbsd loader to correctly download the kernel? I tried using both Ubuntu 22.04 and Raspberry Pi OS as the boot server for netbooting a NeXTstation or NeXTstation Color (tried them both), but can't get it to load the kernel.
When I boot the NeXTstation, using en()netbsd, it successfully uses BOOTP to request and get its IP address, then uses TFTP to successfully get the boot loader (boot.netbsd), then the boot loader successfully mounts the NFS directory containing the kernel and I believe starts to download the kernel. The screen just shows a single vertical bar where I think the spinny thing is going to happen, but then just freezes for about 20 seconds before giving a "open en()netbsd: Unknown error: code 60".
Again, I tried two different Linux OSs on two different servers, tried two different NeXTstations (both non-Turbo), same EXACT symptom. I tried NetBSD 10.1, and also 10.0, same symptom.
Was hoping you ran into this as well and figured out the magic answer. Thanks!