[TUHS] Re: Making boot disks

[pete@dunnington.u-net.com (Pete Turnbull)]

On Oct 1,  1:37, Ian Molton wrote:
>
> On Tue, 1 Oct 2002 09:29:02 +0930
> "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>
> > Well, it would be nice to know what you're really trying to do.
> > What's the hardware?  If the file system is UFS, it's unlikely to be a
> > good fit for Linux.  I'd say "try FreeBSD", but without knowing more
> > about your software and hardware, it's not clear if that would be any
> > better.  Google suggests that it runs on ARMs.  Is that correct?
>
> The hardware is an obscure british platform from back when the ARM was
> young. - The Archimedes.
>
> The CPU is the ARM2 or 3 (either work) and the systems have SCSI,
> ethernet, and (up to) 16Mb of RAM.
>
> I dont actually know what the filesystem is, but my guess is UFS based
> on the newfs command in the mkkernel script, and a rumour it is BSD
> derived.

It is indeed a straight port of BSD 4.x, where x depends in whether is it's
RISC iX 1 or 1.2 (R440 used 4.2, I think; R260 used 4.3).

> I have everything from a machines filesystem in a tarball.
>
> I simply have no bootdisk, and cant create one without a suitable newfs
>
> > > any advice from the list would be appreciated :)

Take a look at James Carter's page at
http://www.jfc.org.uk/documents/riscix_clone.html

James and I worked this out when we rescued half-a-dozen R260's in various
states of disrepair and with various not-quite-complete copies of RISC iX.

> is it possible for someone else to make a filesystem image for me that I
> could dd onto a floppy? I suspect that this system uses an old variant
> of ufs.

It is a standard 4.3 filesystem (at least for the verison for an R260).  It
even says so when it boots:

RISC iX Release 1.2
ARM3 processor, cache enabled
...
...
Root fstype 4.3, name /dev/sd0a
Swap fstype spec, name /dev/sd0S
...


One of us could copy some stuff for you.  I'm not sure you'd be able to get
what you need onto a single floppy, though.  That's not how Acorn did it.

We'd certainly be willing to help, especially if you have any RISC iX stuff
we're missing.

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York