When
NetBSD bootstraps it probes the innards of the machine on which it is running and locates controllers, drives, and other devices, printing out what it finds on the console. This procedure is driven by a system configuration table which is processed by
config(1) and compiled into each kernel.
Autoconfiguration on the HP300s is similar to that on the VAX, the primary difference is in the naming conventions. On the HP300, if devices exist which are not configured they will be ignored; if devices exist of unsupported type they will be ignored.
Normally, the system uses the disk from which it was loaded as the root filesystem. If that is not possible, a generic system will use ‘
rd0' if it exists. If such a system is booted with the
RB_ASKNAME option (see
reboot(2)), then the name of the root device is read from the console terminal at boot time, and any available device may be used.