Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!husc6!rice!sun-spots-request
From: wucs1!br@uunet.uu.net (Billy Ross)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: And then he moved /boot to /usr...
Message-ID: <611@wucs1.wustl.edu>
Date: 19 Dec 88 22:56:28 GMT
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Original-Date: 9 Dec 88 16:13:49 GMT
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 62, message 1 of 12

David Collier-Brown writes:
>Does anyone know if the physical position of /boot on the disk is
>critical?  

Yes, unlike other 4.3 systems, Sun 4.0 requires that the bootblock know
the location of the /boot binary.  From the installboot(8) manual page:

     The boot(8S) program is loaded from disk by  bootblock  code
     which resides in the bootblock area of a disk partition.  In
     order for the bootblock code to read the boot program  (usu-
     ally /boot) it is necessary for it to know the block numbers
     occupied by the boot  program.   Previous  versions  of  the
     bootblock  code  could  find  /boot by interpreting the file
     system on the partition from which it was being booted,  but
     this is no longer so.

Bill Ross 	Washington University ECL,  St. Louis 314-889-5894
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