August 22, 2004 INSTALL 8 NetBSD

NAME

INSTALL - Installation procedure for NetBSD/sgimips.

CONTENTS

                                                              

About this Document............................................2 What is NetBSD?................................................3 Changes Between The NetBSD 3.0.2 and 3.0.3 updates.............3 Supported devices...........................................3 Kernel......................................................3 Networking..................................................3 File system.................................................4 Security....................................................4 Miscellaneous...............................................4 alpha specific..............................................4 mac68k specific.............................................5 sparc specific..............................................5 Changes Between The NetBSD 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 updates.............5 Kernel......................................................5 Networking..................................................5 File system.................................................5 Libraries...................................................5 Security....................................................5 Miscellaneous...............................................5 amd64 specific..............................................6 sparc specific..............................................6 mac68k specific.............................................6 Changes Between The NetBSD 3.0 release and 3.0.1 update........6 Kernel......................................................6 Networking..................................................7 File system.................................................7 Libraries...................................................7 Security....................................................7 Miscellaneous...............................................8 acorn26 specific............................................8 amiga specific..............................................8 hp300 specific..............................................8 i386 specific...............................................8 m68k specific...............................................8 mips specific...............................................8 powerpc specific............................................8 sparc specific..............................................9 xen specific................................................9 The Future of NetBSD...........................................9 Sources of NetBSD..............................................9 NetBSD 3.0.3 Release Contents.................................10 NetBSD/sgimips subdirectory structure......................11 Binary distribution sets...................................11 NetBSD/sgimips System Requirements and Supported Devices......13 Supported machines.........................................13 Unsupported machines.......................................13 Supported devices..........................................14 Unsupported devices........................................14 Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media..................14 Preparing your System for NetBSD installation.................15 Installing the NetBSD System..................................16 Install via a bootable CD-ROM..............................17 Installation for diskless configurations...................17 Installation to local disk from the network................18 Once you've booted the diskimage...........................18 Running the sysinst installation program...................18 Introduction............................................18 General.................................................18 Quick install...........................................18 Booting NetBSD..........................................19 Network configuration...................................20 Installation drive selection and parameters.............20 Partitioning the disk...................................20 Preparing your hard disk................................21 Getting the distribution sets...........................21 Installation using ftp..................................21 Installation using NFS..................................21 Installation from CD-ROM................................22 Installation from an unmounted file system..............22 Installation from a local directory.....................22 Extracting the distribution sets........................22 Finalizing your installation............................22 Post installation steps.......................................23 Upgrading a previously-installed NetBSD System................25 Compatibility Issues With Previous NetBSD Releases............26 Issues affecting an upgrade from NetBSD 2.1 and older......26 Using online NetBSD documentation.............................26 Administrivia.................................................27 Thanks go to..................................................28 We are........................................................32 Legal Mumbo-Jumbo.............................................38 The End.......................................................44

DESCRIPTION

About this Document

This document describes the installation procedure for NetBSD3.0.3 on the sgimips platform. It is available in four different formats titled INSTALL.ext, where .ext is one of .ps, .html, .more, or .txt:

.ps
PostScript.

.html
Standard Internet HTML.

.more
The enhanced text format used on UNIX-like systems by the more(1) and less(1) pager utility programs. This is the format in which the on-line man pages are generally presented.

.txt
Plain old ASCII.

You are reading the HTML version.

What is NetBSD?

The NetBSD Operating System is a fully functional Open Source UNIX-like operating system derived from the University of California, Berkeley Networking Release 2 (Net/2), 4.4BSD-Lite, and 4.4BSD-Lite2 sources. NetBSD runs on fifty four different system architectures (ports), featuring seventeen machine architectures across fifteen distinct CPU families, and is being ported to more. The NetBSD3.0.3 release contains complete binary releases for many different system architectures. (A few ports are not fully supported at this time and are thus not part of the binary distribution. For information on them, please see the NetBSD web site at http://www.NetBSD.org/.)

NetBSD is a completely integrated system. In addition to its highly portable, high performance kernel, NetBSD features a complete set of user utilities, compilers for several languages, the X Window System, firewall software and numerous other tools, all accompanied by full source code.

NetBSD is a creation of the members of the Internet community. Without the unique cooperation and coordination the net makes possible, it's likely that NetBSD wouldn't exist.

Changes Between The NetBSD 3.0.2 and 3.0.3 updates

The NetBSD 3.0.3 update is the third security/critical update of the NetBSD 3.0 release branch. This represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical in nature for stability or security reasons.

These fixes will also appear in future releases (NetBSD 3.2 etc), together with other less-critical fixes and feature enhancements.

Specific updates are as follows:

Supported devices
Kernel
Networking
File system
Security
Miscellaneous
alpha specific
mac68k specific
sparc specific

Changes Between The NetBSD 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 updates

The NetBSD 3.0.2 update is the second security/critical update of the NetBSD 3.0 release branch. This represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical in nature for stability or security reasons.

These fixes will also appear in future releases (NetBSD 3.1 etc), together with other less-critical fixes and feature enhancements.

Specific updates are as follows:

Kernel
Networking
File system
Libraries
Security
Miscellaneous
amd64 specific
sparc specific
mac68k specific

Changes Between The NetBSD 3.0 release and 3.0.1 update

The NetBSD 3.0.1 update is the first security/critical update of the NetBSD 3.0 release branch. This represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical in nature for stability or security reasons.

These fixes will also appear in future releases (NetBSD 3.1 etc), together with other less-critical fixes and feature enhancements.

Specific updates are as follows:

Kernel
Networking
File system
Libraries
Security
Miscellaneous
acorn26 specific
amiga specific
hp300 specific
i386 specific
m68k specific
mips specific
powerpc specific
sparc specific
xen specific

This is the third major release of NetBSD for the sgimips platform.

The Future of NetBSD

The NetBSD Foundation has been incorporated as a non-profit organization. Its purpose is to encourage, foster and promote the free exchange of computer software, namely the NetBSD Operating System. The foundation will allow for many things to be handled more smoothly than could be done with our previous informal organization. In particular, it provides the framework to deal with other parties that wish to become involved in the NetBSD Project.

The NetBSD Foundation will help improve the quality of NetBSD by:

We intend to begin narrowing the time delay between releases. Our ambition is to provide a full release every six to eight months.

We hope to support even more hardware in the future, and we have a rather large number of other ideas about what can be done to improve NetBSD.

We intend to continue our current practice of making the NetBSD-current development source available on a daily basis.

We intend to integrate free, positive changes from whatever sources submit them, providing that they are well thought-out and increase the usability of the system.

Above all, we hope to create a stable and accessible system, and to be responsive to the needs and desires of NetBSD users, because it is for and because of them that NetBSD exists.

Sources of NetBSD

Refer to http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.

NetBSD 3.0.3 Release Contents

The root directory of the NetBSD3.0.3 release is organized as follows:

.../NetBSD-3.0.3/

CHANGES
Changes since earlier NetBSD releases.

LAST_MINUTE
Last minute changes.

MIRRORS
A list of sites that mirror the NetBSD3.0.3 distribution.

README.files
README describing the distribution's contents.

TODO
NetBSD's todo list (also somewhat incomplete and out of date).

patches/
Post-release source code patches.

source/
Source distribution sets; see below.

In addition to the files and directories listed above, there is one directory per architecture, for each of the architectures for which NetBSD3.0.3 has a binary distribution.

The source distribution sets can be found in subdirectories of the source subdirectory of the distribution tree. They contain the complete sources to the system. The source distribution sets are as follows:

gnusrc
This set contains the ``gnu'' sources, including the source for the compiler, assembler, groff, and the other GNU utilities in the binary distribution sets.
79 MB gzipped, 367 MB uncompressed

pkgsrc
This set contains the ``pkgsrc'' sources, which contain the infrastructure to build third-party packages.
24 MB gzipped, 200 MB uncompressed

sharesrc
This set contains the ``share'' sources, which include the sources for the man pages not associated with any particular program; the sources for the typesettable document set; the dictionaries; and more.
5 MB gzipped, 20 MB uncompressed

src
This set contains all of the base NetBSD3.0.3 sources which are not in gnusrc, sharesrc, or syssrc.
37 MB gzipped, 176 MB uncompressed

syssrc
This set contains the sources to the NetBSD3.0.3 kernel for all architectures; config(8); and dbsym(8).
26 MB gzipped, 140 MB uncompressed

xsrc
This set contains the sources to the X Window System.
84 MB gzipped, 450 MB uncompressed

All the above source sets are located in the source/sets subdirectory of the distribution tree.

The source sets are distributed as compressed tar files. Except for the pkgsrc set, which is traditionally unpacked into /usr/pkgsrc, all sets may be unpacked into /usr/src with the command:
       #( cd / ; tar -zxpf - ) < set_name.tgz

In each of the source distribution set directories, there are files which contain the checksums of the files in the directory:

BSDSUM
Historic BSD checksums for the various files in that directory, in the format produced by the command:
cksum -o 1 file.

CKSUM
POSIX checksums for the various files in that directory, in the format produced by the command:
cksum file.

MD5
MD5 digests for the various files in that directory, in the format produced by the command:
cksum-m file.

SYSVSUM
Historic AT&T System V UNIX checksums for the various files in that directory, in the format produced by the command:
cksum -o 2 file.

The MD5 digest is the safest checksum, followed by the POSIX checksum. The other two checksums are provided only to ensure that the widest possible range of system can check the integrity of the release files.

NetBSD/sgimips subdirectory structure
The sgimips-specific portion of the NetBSD3.0.3 release is found in the sgimips subdirectory of the distribution: .../NetBSD-3.0.3/sgimips/. It contains the following files and directories:

INSTALL.html
INSTALL.ps
INSTALL.txt
INSTALL.more
Installation notes in various file formats, including this file. The .more file contains underlined text using the more(1) conventions for indicating italic and bold display.
binary/
kernel/
netbsd-GENERIC_INDY.gz
A kernel suitable for booting on Indy, Indigo 2 and similar machines.
netbsd.ecoff-GENERIC_INDY.gz
GENERIC_INDY targeted for being bootable on older Indigo 2 and possibly Indy machines with PROMs that do not understand the ELF binary format.
sets/
sgimips binary distribution sets; see below.
installation/
netboot/
NFS-root images
Binary distribution sets
The NetBSD sgimips binary distribution sets contain the binaries which comprise the NetBSD3.0.3 release for the sgimips. The binary distribution sets can be found in the sgimips/binary/sets subdirectory of the NetBSD3.0.3 distribution tree, and are as follows:

base
The NetBSD3.0.3 sgimips base binary distribution. You must install this distribution set. It contains the base NetBSD utilities that are necessary for the system to run and be minimally functional. It includes shared library support, and excludes everything described below.
20 MB gzipped, 72 MB uncompressed

comp
Things needed for compiling programs. This set includes the system include files (/usr/include) and the various system libraries (except the shared libraries, which are included as part of the base set). This set also includes the manual pages for all of the utilities it contains, as well as the system call and library manual pages.
21 MB gzipped, 88 MB uncompressed

etc
This distribution set contains the system configuration files that reside in /etc and in several other places. This set must be installed if you are installing the system from scratch, but should not be used if you are upgrading.
1 MB gzipped, 1 MB uncompressed

games
This set includes the games and their manual pages.
4 MB gzipped, 9 MB uncompressed

kern-GENERIC_INDY
This set contains a NetBSD/sgimips 3.0.3 GENERIC_INDY kernel (for Indy, Indigo 2 and Challenge S/M machines), named /netbsd. This set also contains an ECOFF kernel named /netbsd.ecoff that your system may need to boot. You must install this distribution set.
3 MB gzipped, 7 . MB uncompressed

man
This set includes all of the manual pages for the binaries and other software contained in the base set. Note that it does not include any of the manual pages that are included in the other sets.
8 MB gzipped, 30 MB uncompressed

misc
This set includes the (rather large) system dictionaries, the typesettable document set, and other files from /usr/share.
3 MB gzipped, 9 MB uncompressed

text
This set includes NetBSD's text processing tools, including groff(1), all related programs, and their manual pages.
3 MB gzipped, 9 MB uncompressed

NetBSD maintains its own set of sources for the X Window System in order to assure tight integration and compatibility. These sources are based on XFree86, and tightly track XFree86 releases. They are currently equivalent to XFree86 4.4.0. Binary sets for the X Window System are distributed with NetBSD. The sets are:

xbase
The basic files needed for a complete X client environment. This does not include the X servers.
7 MB gzipped, 24 MB uncompressed

xcomp
The extra libraries and include files needed to compile X source code.
10 MB gzipped, 40 MB uncompressed

xfont
Fonts needed by X.
31 MB gzipped, 39 MB uncompressed

xetc
Configuration files for X which could be locally modified.
0.03 MB gzipped, 0.17 MB uncompressed

xserver
The X server.
11 MB gzipped, 37 MB uncompressed

The sgimips binary distribution sets are distributed as gzipped tar files named with the extension .tgz, e.g. base.tgz.

The instructions given for extracting the source sets work equally well for the binary sets, but it is worth noting that if you use that method, the filenames stored in the sets are relative and therefore the files are extracted below the current directory. Therefore, if you want to extract the binaries into your system, i.e. replace the system binaries with them, you have to run the tar -xpf command from the root directory ( / ) of your system. This utility is used only in a Traditional method installation.

The following are included in the sgimips/installation directory:

diskimage/

diskimage.gz
FFS disk image of the installation filesystem.

netboot/

diskimage.tgz
Minimal file set necessary for NFS-root installations; to be extracted on the NFS server.

The following are included in the sgimips/binary/kernel directory:

netbsd.ecoff-GENERIC_INDY.gz
An ECOFF version of the GENERIC_INDY kernel (gzipped). This kernel can be used when booting machines whose PROMs do not understand the ELF binary format.

netbsd-INDY_INSTALL.gz
A gzipped INDY_INSTALL kernel, which includes an embedded ramdisk with the installation tools.

netbsd-INDY_INSTALL.ecoff.gz
An ECOFF version of the netbsd-INDY_INSTALL kernel (also gzipped).

netbsd-INDY_INSTALL.symbols.gz
Symbols for netbsd-INDY_INSTALL.gz.

Note:
Each directory in the sgimips binary distribution also has its own checksum files, just as the source distribution does.

NetBSD/sgimips System Requirements and Supported Devices

NetBSD/sgimips is aimed to run on MIPS-based computers manufactured by SGI.

Supported machines
Unsupported machines
Supported devices
Unsupported devices

Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media

Note that if you are installing or upgrading from a writable media, the media can be write-protected if you wish. These systems mount a root image from inside the kernel, and will not need to write to the media. If you booted from a floppy, the floppy disk may be removed from the drive after the system has booted.

Installation is supported from several media types, including:

The steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets for installation depend upon which installation medium you choose. The steps for the various media are outlined below.

CD-ROM / DVD
Find out where the distribution set files are on the CD-ROM or DVD. Likely locations are binary/sets and sgimips/binary/sets.

Proceed to the instruction on installation.

FTP
The preparations for this installation/upgrade method are easy; all you need to do is make sure that there's an FTP site from which you can retrieve the NetBSD distribution when you're about to install or upgrade. If you don't have DHCP available on your network, you will need to know the numeric IP address of that site, and, if it's not on a network directly connected to the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD, you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest to the NetBSD machine. Finally, you need to know the numeric IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. If you don't have access to a functioning nameserver during installation, the IPv4 address of ftp.NetBSD.org is 204.152.184.75 and the IPv6 address is 2001:4f8:4:7:2e0:81ff:fe21:6563 (as of June, 2004).

Once you have this information, you can proceed to the next step in the installation or upgrade process. If you're installing NetBSD from scratch, go to the section on preparing your hard disk, below. If you're upgrading an existing installation, go directly to the section on upgrading.

Note:
This method of installation is recommended for those familiar with using BSD network configuration and management commands. If you aren't, this documentation should help, but is not intended to be all-encompassing.

NFS
Place the NetBSD distribution sets you wish to install into a directory on an NFS server, and make that directory mountable by the machine on which you are installing or upgrading NetBSD. This will probably require modifying the /etc/exports file on of the NFS server and resetting its mount daemon (mountd). (Both of these actions will probably require superuser privileges on the server.)

You need to know the numeric IP address of the NFS server, and, if you don't have DHCP available on your network and the server is not on a network directly connected to the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD, you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest to the NetBSD machine. Finally, you need to know the numeric IP address of the NetBSD machine itself.

Once the NFS server is set up properly and you have the information mentioned above, you can proceed to the next step in the installation or upgrade process. If you're installing NetBSD from scratch, go to the section on preparing your hard disk, below. If you're upgrading an existing installation, go directly to the section on upgrading.

Note:
This method of installation is recommended for those already familiar with using BSD network configuration and management commands. If you aren't, this documentation should help, but is not intended to be all-encompassing.

Preparing your System for NetBSD installation

First and foremost, before beginning the installation process, make sure you have a reliable backup of any data (e.g., an old IRIX installation) you wish to preserve.

Booting NetBSD/sgimips for the first time is most commonly done from the network or CD-ROM. If you try network install, you must set up DHCP, TFTP, and possibly NFS for the installation procedure to be successful. Although newer SGI bootproms can read ELF kernels directly from the network, others require that you boot an ECOFF version of the kernel. Attempting to boot an ELF kernel on a system with a PROM that only supports ECOFF binaries will result in the following message being displayed by the PROM:

       Illegal f_magic number 0x7f45, expected MIPSELMAGIC or MIPSEBMAGIC.

You can convert the standard ELF format kernel into an ECOFF kernel using the objcopy tool.

Note that some older bootproms have an interesting bug in reading the kernel via TFTP. They handle the port number as a signed entity, and can thus not connect to ports >32767. You can work around this problem on the TFTP server (given that it is a NetBSD host) by using ``sysctl'' to set ``net.inet.ip.anonportmin'' and ``net.inet.ip.anonportmax'' to more suitable values. For example:


       # sysctl -w net.inet.ip.anonportmin=16384
       # sysctl -w net.inet.ip.anonportmax=32767

Installing the NetBSD System

To install or upgrade NetBSD, you need to first boot an installation program and then interact with the screen-menu program sysinst. The installation program actually consists of the NetBSD kernel plus an in-memory file system of utility programs.

The installation methods are:

  1. Installation from an existing NetBSD or IRIX system by booting the install kernel from an existing file system.

  2. Installation in a diskless environment. This means that you will install your entire system onto a remotely shared disk.

  3. Booting the install kernel over the network and installing onto a local disk. The beginning of the procedure is similar to diskless installation, but you will eventually end up writing the system onto your local disk.

You should familiarize yourself with the console PROM environment and the hardware configuration. A good place to study PROM tricks is the IRIX "prom" manual page. Be sure you know how to print the configuration of your machine, and how to boot from disk or network, as appropriate.

To boot from disk, use:

For all drives (including all SCSI-2 drives), the kernel should correctly detect the disk geometry.

If you're installing NetBSD/sgimips for the first time it's a very good idea to pre-plan partition sizes for the disks onto which you're installing NetBSD. Changing the size of partitions after you've installed is difficult. If you do not have a spare bootable disk, it may be simpler to re-install NetBSD again from scratch.

To be able to boot from local disk an SGI Volume Header partition is required. This special partition is accessed by the PROM to load the NetBSD/sgimips boot program. The partition should be about 2 MB in size, but can be reduced somewhat. The minimum size can approach 150k, but this doesn't leave room for upgrade boot programs.

Install via a bootable CD-ROM
The NetBSD/sgimips CD-ROM is not ISO-formatted. Since SGI PROMs can not boot from an ISO/CD-9660 filesystem, the CD-ROM image is generated with an SGI Volume Header for the bootstrap loader and an ISO/CD-9660-formatted partition for the distribution.

To install from a NetBSD/sgimips CD-ROM, enter the PROM command-line environment and execute one of the following commands, replacing X with the SCSI-ID of the CD-ROM:

(for most Indigo2 (IP22) and Indy (IP24) machines)

>> boot -f scsi(0)cdrom(X)rdisk(0)partition(8)ip2xboot
(for Indigo (IP20) and Indigo2/Indy machines with old PROMs)
>> boot -f scsi(0)cdrom(X)rdisk(0)partition(8)aoutboot
(for O2 (IP32) machines)
>> boot -f pci(0)scsi(0)cdrom(X)rdisk(0)partition(8)ip3xboot

Installation for diskless configurations
This section assumes you know how to configure DHCP, TFTP, and NFS services on your server.

  1. Place the kernel into the TFTP server's download area. If the kernel has a ``.gz'' suffix, you must first uncompress it using the gunzip program. You must also decide which kernel you need to boot. Because of differences in SGI hardware between different machines, the kernel load addresses differ. You will need GENERIC32_IP2x for the Indy and Indigo2, ecoff-GENERIC32_IP2x for the Indigo (and Indy/Indigo2 machines with old PROMs), and GENERIC32_IP3x for the O2.


           server# gzip -d -c netbsd-GENERIC32_IP2x.gz > /tftpboot/netbsd-sgimips
    or
           server# gzip -d -c netbsd.ecoff-GENERIC32_IP2x.gz > /tftpboot/netbsd-sgimips
    or
           server# gzip -d -c netbsd-GENERIC32_IP2x.gz > /tftpboot/netbsd-sgimips

    Note that your DHCP server must be configured to specify this file as the boot file for the client.

  2. Unpack the distribution sets into the client's root directory on the server.


           server# cd /export/client/mipseb
           server# gzcat .../base.tgz | tar xvpf -
           server# gzcat .../etc.tgz | tar xvpf -
           [ repeat for all sets you wish to unpack ]

  3. Load the kernel from the TFTP server:


           >> setenv SystemPartition bootp():
           >> setenv netaddr your.ip.here.please
           >> boot

The installation of your diskless NetBSD/sgimips system is now complete! You may now skip ahead to any post-installation instructions.

Installation to local disk from the network
This section is a subset of the above section, and also assumes that you know how to configure DHCP and TFTP services on your server.

  1. Place the install kernel into the TFTP server's download area. Just as above, you need to place the correct bootable kernel into the TFTP server's download area. However, instead of a GENERIC kernel, you must use the correct INSTALL kernel. This kernel contains a ramdisk with the installation tools and will allow you to proceed with installation without further setup.

    If the kernel has a ``.gz'' suffix, you must first uncompress it using the gunzip program. As above, you must choose either the netbsd-INSTALL32_IP2x, netbsd-INSTALL32_IP2x.ecoff, or netbsd-INSTALL32_IP3x kernel.

    Note that your DHCP server must be configured to specify this file as the boot file for the client.

  2. Load the kernel from the TFTP server:


           >> setenv SystemPartition bootp():
           >> setenv netaddr your.ip.here.please
           >> boot

Once you've booted the diskimage
Once you've booted the installation kernel you will need to select your terminal type. Use vt100 for a serial console with a vt100-compatible terminal, or xterm or xterms for a tip(1) or cu(1) connection running in an xterm(1).

The system will then start the sysinst program.

Running the sysinst installation program

  1. Introduction

    Using sysinst, installing NetBSD is a relatively easy process. You still should read this document and have it in hand when doing the installation process. This document tries to be a good guideline for the installation and as such covers many details for the sake of completeness. Do not let this discourage you; the install program is not hard to use.

  2. General

    The following is a walk-through of the steps you will take while getting NetBSD installed on your hard disk. sysinst is a menu driven installation system that allows for some freedom in doing the installation. Sometimes, questions will be asked and in many cases the default answer will be displayed in brackets (``[ ]'') after the question. If you wish to stop the installation, you may press CONTROL-C at any time, but if you do, you'll have to begin the installation process again from scratch by running the /sysinst program from the command prompt. It is not necessary to reboot.

  3. Quick install

    First, let's describe a quick install. The other sections of this document go into the installation procedure in more detail, but you may find that you do not need this. If you want detailed instructions, skip to the next section. This section describes a basic installation, using a CD-ROM install as an example.

  4. Booting NetBSD

    You may want to read the boot messages, to notice your disk's name and capacity. Its name will be something like sd0 and the geometry will be printed on a line that begins with its name. As mentioned above, you may need your disk's geometry when creating NetBSD's partitions. You will also need to know the name, to tell sysinst on which disk to install. The most important thing to know is that sd0 is your first SCSI disk, sd1 the second, etc.

    Once NetBSD has booted and printed all the boot messages, you will be presented with a welcome message and a main menu. It will also include instructions for using the menus.

  5. Network configuration

    If you will not use network operation during the installation, but you do want your machine to be configured for networking once it is installed, you should first go to the Utility menu, and select the Configure network option. If you only want to temporarily use networking during the installation, you can specify these parameters later. If you are not using the Domain Name System (DNS), you can give an empty response in reply to answers relating to this.

  6. Installation drive selection and parameters

    To start the installation, select Install NetBSD to hard disk from the main menu.

    The first thing is to identify the disk on which you want to install NetBSD. sysinst will report a list of disks it finds and ask you for your selection. Depending on how many disks are found, you may get a different message. You should see disk names like sd0 or sd1.

  7. Partitioning the disk

  8. Editing the NetBSD disklabel

    The partition table of the NetBSD part of a disk is called a disklabel. There are 4 layouts for the NetBSD part of the disk that you can pick from: Standard, Standard with X, Custom and Use Existing. The first two use a set of default values (that you can change) suitable for a normal installation, possibly including X. With the Custom option you can specify everything yourself. The last option uses the partition info already present on the disk.

    You will be presented with the current layout of the NetBSD disklabel, and given a chance to change it. For each partition, you can set the type, offset and size, block and fragment size, and the mount point. The type that NetBSD uses for normal file storage is called 4.2BSD. A swap partition has a special type called swap. Some partitions in the disklabel have a fixed purpose.

    a
    Root partition (/)

    b
    Swap partition.

    c
    The NetBSD portion of the disk.

    d
    The SGI volume header (boot partition)

    e-p
    Available for other use. Traditionally, e is the partition mounted on /usr, but this is historical practice and not a fixed value.

    You will then be asked to name your disk's disklabel. The default response will be ok for most purposes. If you choose to name it something different, make sure the name is a single word and contains no special characters. You don't need to remember this name.

  9. Preparing your hard disk

    You are now at the point of no return. Nothing has been written to your disk yet, but if you confirm that you want to install NetBSD, your hard drive will be modified. If you are sure you want to proceed, enter yes at the prompt.

    The install program will now label your disk and make the file systems you specified. The file systems will be initialized to contain NetBSD bootstrapping binaries and configuration files. You will see messages on your screen from the various NetBSD disk preparation tools that are running. There should be no errors in this section of the installation. If there are, restart from the beginning of the installation process. Otherwise, you can continue the installation program after pressing the return key.

  10. Getting the distribution sets

    The NetBSD distribution consists of a number of sets, that come in the form of gzipped tarfiles. A few sets must be installed for a working system, others are optional. At this point of the installation, you will be presented with a menu which enables you to choose from one of the following methods of installing the sets. Some of these methods will first load the sets on your hard disk, others will extract the sets directly.

    For all these methods, the first step is making the sets available for extraction, and then do the actual installation. The sets can be made available in a few different ways. The following sections describe each of those methods. After reading the one about the method you will be using, you can continue to the section labeled `Extracting the distribution sets'.

  11. Installation using ftp

    To be able to install using ftp, you first need to configure your network setup, if you haven't already at the start of the install procedure. sysinst will do this for you, asking you if you want to use DHCP, and if not to provide data like IP address, hostname, etc. If you do not have name service set up for the machine that you are installing on, you can just press RETURN in answer to these questions, and DNS will not be used.

    You will also be asked to specify the host that you want to transfer the sets from, the directory on that host, the account name and password used to log into that host using ftp, and optionally a proxy server to use. If you did not set up DNS when answering the questions to configure networking, you will need to specify an IP address instead of a hostname for the ftp server.

    sysinst will proceed to transfer all the default set files from the remote site to your hard disk.

  12. Installation using NFS

    To be able to install using NFS, you first need to configure your network setup, if you haven't already at the start of the install procedure. sysinst will do this for you, asking you if you want to use DHCP, and if not to provide data like IP address, hostname, etc. If you do not have name service set up for the machine that you are installing on, you can just press RETURN in answer to these questions, and DNS will not be used.

    You will also be asked to specify the host that you want to transfer the sets from, and the directory on that host that the files are in. This directory should be mountable by the machine you are installing on, i.e. correctly exported to your machine.

    If you did not set up DNS when answering the questions to configure networking, you will need to specify an IP address instead of a hostname for the NFS server.

  13. Installation from CD-ROM

    When installing from a CD-ROM, you will be asked to specify the device name for your CD-ROM player (usually cd0), and the directory name on the CD-ROM where the distribution files are.

    sysinst will then check if the files are indeed available in the specified location, and proceed to the actual extraction of the sets.

  14. Installation from an unmounted file system

    In order to install from a local file system, you will need to specify the device that the file system resides on (for example sd1e) the type of the file system, and the directory on the specified file system where the sets are located. sysinst will then check if it can indeed access the sets at that location.

    If this is a CD-ROM installation, the device used will be the name for your CD-ROM player with partition letter 'a' (usually cd0a).

  15. Installation from a local directory

    This option assumes that you have already done some preparation yourself. The sets should be located in a directory on a file system that is already accessible. sysinst will ask you for the name of this directory.

  16. Extracting the distribution sets

    After the install sets containing the NetBSD distribution have been made available, you can either extract all the sets (a full installation), or only extract sets that you have selected. In the latter case, you will be shown the currently selected sets, and given the opportunity to select the sets you want. Some sets always need to be installed (kern, base) and etc they will not be shown in this selection menu.

    Before extraction begins, you can elect to watch the files being extracted; the name of each file that is extracted will be shown. This can slow down the installation process considerably, especially on machines with slow graphics consoles or serial consoles.

    After all the files have been extracted, all the necessary device node files will be created. If you have already configured networking, you will be asked if you want to use this configuration for normal operation. If so, these values will be installed in the network configuration files. The next menu will allow you to select the time zone that you're in, to make sure your clock has the right offset from UTC. Finally you will be asked to select a password encryption algorithm and can than set a password for the "root" account, to prevent the machine coming up without access restrictions.

  17. Finalizing your installation

    Congratulations, you have successfully installed NetBSD3.0.3. You can now reboot the machine, and boot NetBSD from hard disk.


Post installation steps

Once you've got the operating system running, there are a few things you need to do in order to bring the system into a properly configured state, with the most important ones described below.

  1. Configuring /etc/rc.conf

    If you or the installation software haven't done any configuration of /etc/rc.conf (sysinst usually will), the system will drop you into single user mode on first reboot with the message

           /etc/rc.conf is not configured. Multiuser boot aborted.

    and with the root file system (/) mounted read-only. When the system asks you to choose a shell, simply press RETURN to get to a /bin/sh prompt. If you are asked for a terminal type, respond with vt220 (or whatever is appropriate for your terminal type) and press RETURN. You may need to type one of the following commands to get your delete key to work properly, depending on your keyboard:
           # stty erase '^h'
           # stty erase '^?'
    At this point, you need to configure at least one file in the /etc directory. You will need to mount your root file system read/write with:
           # /sbin/mount -u -w /
    Change to the /etc directory and take a look at the /etc/rc.conf file. Modify it to your tastes, making sure that you set rc_configured=YES so that your changes will be enabled and a multi-user boot can proceed. Default values for the various programs can be found in /etc/defaults/rc.conf, where some in-line documentation may be found. More complete documentation can be found in rc.conf(5).

    If your /usr directory is on a separate partition and you do not know how to use ed, you will have to mount your /usr partition to gain access to ex or vi. Do the following:


           # mount /usr
           # export TERM=vt220

    If you have /var on a separate partition, you need to repeat that step for it. After that, you can edit /etc/rc.conf with vi(1). When you have finished, type exit at the prompt to leave the single-user shell and continue with the multi-user boot.

    Other values that need to be set in /etc/rc.conf for a networked environment are hostname and possibly defaultroute, furthermore add an ifconfig_int for your <int> network interface, along the lines of


           ifconfig_sq0="inet 123.45.67.89 netmask 255.255.255.0"

    or, if you have myname.my.dom in /etc/hosts:


           ifconfig_sq0="inet myname.my.dom netmask 255.255.255.0"

    To enable proper hostname resolution, you will also want to add an /etc/resolv.conf file or (if you are feeling a little more adventurous) run named(8). See resolv.conf(5) or named(8) for more information. Instead of manually configuring network and naming service, DHCP can be used by setting dhclient=YES in /etc/rc.conf.

    Other files in /etc that may require modification or setting up include /etc/mailer.conf and /etc/nsswitch.conf.

  2. Logging in

    After reboot, you can log in as root at the login prompt. Unless you've set a password in sysinst, there is no initial password. If you're using the machine in a networked environment, you should create an account for yourself (see below) and protect it and the ``root'' account with good passwords. By default, root login from the network is disabled (even via ssh(1)). One way to become root over the network is to log in as a different user that belongs to group ``wheel'' (see group(5)) and use su(1) to become root.

    Unless you have connected an unusual terminal device as the console you can just press RETURN when it prompts for Terminal type? [...].

  3. Adding accounts

    Use the useradd(8) command to add accounts to your system. Do not edit /etc/passwd directly! See vipw(8) and pwd_mkdb(8) if you want to edit the password database.

  4. The X Window System

    If you have installed the X Window System, look at the files in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc for information.

    Don't forget to add /usr/X11R6/bin to your path in your shell's dot file so that you have access to the X binaries.

  5. Installing third party packages

    If you wish to install any of the software freely available for UNIX-like systems you are strongly advised to first check the NetBSD package system. This automatically handles any changes necessary to make the software run on NetBSD, retrieval and installation of any other packages on which the software may depend, and simplifies installation (and deinstallation), both from source and precompiled binaries.

  6. Misc

Upgrading a previously-installed NetBSD System

The upgrade to NetBSD3.0.3 is a binary upgrade; it can be quite difficult to update the system from an earlier version by recompiling from source, primarily due to interdependencies in the various components.

To do the upgrade, you must have the boot floppy available. You must also have at least the base and kern binary distribution sets available, so that you can upgrade with them, using one of the upgrade methods described above. Finally, you must have sufficient disk space available to install the new binaries. Since files already installed on the system are overwritten in place, you only need additional free space for files which weren't previously installed or to account for growth of the sets between releases. If you have a few megabytes free on each of your root (/) and /usr partitions, you should have enough space.

Since upgrading involves replacing the kernel, the boot blocks on your NetBSD partition, and most of the system binaries, it has the potential to cause data loss. You are strongly advised to back up any important data on the NetBSD partition or on another operating system's partition on your disk before beginning the upgrade process.

The upgrade procedure using the sysinst tool is similar to an installation, but without the hard disk partitioning. sysinst will attempt to merge the settings stored in your /etc directory with the new version of NetBSD. Getting the binary sets is done in the same manner as the installation procedure; refer to the installation part of the document for how to do this. Also, some sanity checks are done, i.e. file systems are checked before unpacking the sets.

After a new kernel has been copied to your hard disk, your machine is a complete NetBSD3.0.3 system. However, that doesn't mean that you're finished with the upgrade process. You will probably want to update the set of device nodes you have in /dev. If you've changed the contents of /dev by hand, you will need to be careful about this, but if not, you can just cd into /dev, and run the command:

       # sh MAKEDEV all

Finally, you will want to delete old binaries that were part of the version of NetBSD that you upgraded from and have since been removed from the NetBSD distribution.

Compatibility Issues With Previous NetBSD Releases

Users upgrading from previous versions of NetBSD may wish to bear the following problems and compatibility issues in mind when upgrading to NetBSD3.0.3.

Issues affecting an upgrade from NetBSD 2.1 and older releases.
It is very important that you populate the directory /etc/pam.d with appropriate configuration files for the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) because you will not be able to login any more otherwise. Using postinstall as described below will take care of this. Please refer to http://www.netbsd.org/guide/en/chap-pam.html for documentation about PAM.

The following issues can generally be resolved by extracting the etc set into a temporary directory and running postinstall:

postinstall -s /path/to/etc.tgz check
postinstall -s /path/to/etc.tgz fix

Issues fixed by postinstall: