NetBSD Running On An iOpener Without IDE HD

Elwood writes "Andrew Gillham has booted NetBSD/i386 -current on his Netpliance i-opener. He did this without opening the case and without using a 2.5" IDE hard drive." Read on for details.

The steps involved (using a normal keyboard) are:

1. Get to a root shell, via 'ESC 4' and fast typing.
2. Bring up PPP to a NetBSD machine. Having a PBX helps
3. Backup the 16MB of flash, with the following:

   # cat /dev/hd0 | gzip -9 > hd0.gz
   # ftp 
   ftp> put hd0.gz 

4. Replace flash with NetBSD image, by ftping compressed file.

   # gzip -d -c file_name.gz | cat > /dev/hd0

5. Wait a few seconds, yank the power to prevent QNX updating flash.
6. Reboot under NetBSD, enjoy.

Full details are available at the main NetBSD Changes page.