BOOT(8)

NAME
boot - system bootstrapping procedures

DESCRIPTION
Windows CE machines with StrongARM CPUs use the hpcboot(8) program to boot NetBSD.

  Power fail and crash recovery
Unfortunately, NetBSD can't reboot itself at power-up or after crashes. The machine will go through the cold reset and boot into Windows CE. You will have to restart NetBSD manually using hpcboot(8).

Once NetBSD starts, an automatic consistency check of the file systems will be performed, and unless this fails, the system will resume multi-user operations.

  Cold starts
On cold reset Windows CE handheld machines attempt to boot the Windows CE operating system from the boot ROM. The boot ROM is usually not rewritable, so you cannot erase or damage Windows CE image.

You can't boot NetBSD directly, skipping Windows CE. The NetBSD bootloader, hpcboot(8), is provided as a Windows CE application program instead. Though the bootloader is an application program, it blows the entire running Windows CE, its data, and its settings away from RAM (but not ROM!) when the kernel boots successfully. If NetBSD is halted the machine will go through the cold reset and will reboot into Windows CE.

  Normal Operation
Please, refer to the hpcboot(8) manual page.

FILES
hpcboot.exe
    bootloader program for Windows CE

SEE ALSO
hpcboot(8)

BUGS
There is no general way to launch the bootloader automatically, as only a few Windows CE machines provide an “auto run” mechanism.

This port doesn't support kloader(4), which means that when the system is rebooted, it goes back to Windows CE.