Hello, On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 8:02 PM Greg Troxel <g...@lexort.com> wrote: > > > Riza Dindir <riza.din...@gmail.com> writes: > > >> Riza Dindir <riza.din...@gmail.com> writes: > >> > >> > I try to use NetBSD from a "HDD caddy" which i installed on my laptop > >> > in place of my DVD drive. When i try to boot the OS (NetBSD), it > >> > prints out a string "mem [0x000000-0x000001 0xaaaa-0xbbb ...]" and > >> > stops there. No boot menu, nothing. > >> > > >> > At what stage in the boot process is this string shown? > >> > >> That may be from the BIOS. > >> > >> What exactly are you doing when you "try to boot NetBSD"? > > > > I am choosing the HDD in the caddy, from the bios boot menu. > > I am guessing this is wd1, or the second disk drive, from the BIOS point > of view?
Yes. When the internal disk (win10) is installed, this is seen as the second disk by the BIOS. > > >> Is there an internal HD and what's on it? > > > > The internal HDD has windows 10 on it. I do not want to loose that, in > > case i need to get back to windows, for video conferencing apps, etc > > that are not supported yet on NetBSD. > > That makes sense - I am just trying to understand the overall layout as > the boot process has a lot of steps. I could not figure out where in the boot process the loading of the system fails. > > >> If you put a different OS on the HD and boot the same way, does it boot? > > > > I did not try putting a different OS on the HDD in the caddy. > > > > What i tried though is this. I have removed the internal HDD (that > > contains Win10) from the system and put the NetBSD disk in its place. > > This booted NetBSD. > > > > I also put the NetBSD disk into the caddy, but no internal HDD, NetBSD > > booted without problems. > > I am guessing that with the windows disk removed, the NetBSD disk, > whether in the internal slot or the DVD slot is the first disk, from the > BIOS viewpoint? Correct. > > > What i would like is to keep the internal disk, but have the system > > boot from the caddy. > > Yes, that's a totally reasonable thing to want to do. > > >> Does your laptop use UEFI or BIOS booting? > > > > I am using UEFI (no secure boot at the moment). The NetBSD disk also > > has the UEFI partition (128MB) that contains the bootx64.efi, and > > another *.efi file. > > The NetBSD disk has the root partition, the swap, partitions as well. > > I have mostly (all?) older systems and am not that familiar with UEFI. > But in general with booting, the BIOS loads one thing, and that loads > the next thing, and so on, until the kernel is running. Usually there > are schemes to pass information about which disk is the boot disk from > one stage to the next. A lot can go wrong. > > I am guessing that the information that the boot disk is the second HD > is getting lost somewhere along the way. > > Did you create this netbsd HD by using the installer from CD/DVD? Are > you using 9.2/amd64? Something else? I created the NetBSD disk from a CD/DVD. I am using NetBSD 9.2/amd64 and used the corresponding CD ISO. I had the disk in the caddy when installing, and booted the CD from a USB enclosure, where i installed my DVD. The installation went fine. But i could not boot the system, so i used a USB3 enclosure that i had lying around at home. Currently i am using the system using a USB3 enclosure for now. But trying to make the HDD caddy work. Riza