August 22, 2004 INSTALL 8 NetBSD

NAME

INSTALL - Installation procedure for NetBSD/sun3.

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.................................................3 Security....................................................3 Miscellaneous...............................................4 alpha specific..............................................4 mac68k specific.............................................4 sparc specific..............................................4 Changes Between The NetBSD 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 updates.............4 Kernel......................................................5 Networking..................................................5 File system.................................................5 Libraries...................................................5 Security....................................................5 Miscellaneous...............................................5 amd64 specific..............................................5 sparc specific..............................................5 mac68k specific.............................................5 Changes Between The NetBSD 3.0 release and 3.0.1 update........5 Kernel......................................................6 Networking..................................................6 File system.................................................7 Libraries...................................................7 Security....................................................7 Miscellaneous...............................................7 acorn26 specific............................................8 amiga specific..............................................8 hp300 specific..............................................8 i386 specific...............................................8 m68k specific...............................................8 mips specific...............................................8 powerpc specific............................................8 sparc specific..............................................8 xen specific................................................8 The Future of NetBSD...........................................9 Sources of NetBSD..............................................9 NetBSD 3.0.3 Release Contents..................................9 NetBSD/sun3 subdirectory structure.........................11 Binary distribution sets...................................11 NetBSD/sun3 System Requirements and Supported Devices.........12 Supported hardware.........................................13 Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media..................14 Creating boot/install tapes................................14 Boot/Install from NFS server...............................14 Install/Upgrade from CD-ROM................................15 Install/Upgrade via FTP....................................15 Preparing your System for NetBSD installation.................15 Installing the NetBSD System..................................16 Installing from tape.......................................16 Installing from NFS........................................17 Installing from SunOS......................................18 Booting the Miniroot.......................................18 Miniroot install program...................................18 Post installation steps.......................................19 Upgrading a previously-installed NetBSD System................21 Compatibility Issues With Previous NetBSD Releases............23 Issues affecting an upgrade from NetBSD 2.1 and older......23 Using online NetBSD documentation.............................23 Administrivia.................................................24 Thanks go to..................................................24 We are........................................................29 Legal Mumbo-Jumbo.............................................35 The End.......................................................41

DESCRIPTION

About this Document

This document describes the installation procedure for NetBSD3.0.3 on the sun3 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 eighth major release of NetBSD/sun3.

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/sun3 subdirectory structure
The sun3-specific portion of the NetBSD3.0.3 release is found in the sun3 subdirectory of the distribution: .../NetBSD-3.0.3/sun3/. 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.gz
A gzipped NetBSD kernel containing code for everything supported in this release.
sets/
sun3 binary distribution sets; see below.
installation/
miniroot/
sun3 miniroot file system image; see below.
misc/
netboot/
Two programs needed to boot sun3 kernels over the network.
tapeimage/
Tape boot programs, and a RAMDISK kernel.
Binary distribution sets
The NetBSD sun3 binary distribution sets contain the binaries which comprise the NetBSD3.0.3 release for the sun3. The binary distribution sets can be found in the sun3/binary/sets subdirectory of the NetBSD3.0.3 distribution tree, and are as follows:

base
The NetBSD3.0.3 sun3 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.
16 MB gzipped, 45 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.
18 MB gzipped, 69 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.
3 MB gzipped, 7 MB uncompressed

kern-GENERIC
This set contains a NetBSD/sun3 3.0.3 GENERIC kernel, named /netbsd. You must install this distribution set.
1 MB gzipped, 2 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.
2 MB gzipped, 7 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.
6 MB gzipped, 17 MB uncompressed

xcomp
The extra libraries and include files needed to compile X source code.
10 MB gzipped, 37 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.
4 MB gzipped, 9 MB uncompressed

The sun3 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.

There is a collection of Sun3 and Sun3X kernels in the sun3/binary/kernels subdirectory of the NetBSD3.0.3 distribution. The ones named netbsd-ramdisk*.gz contain a root file system image and should only be used for the initial installation. The others are included for convenience. (Most people will want to use netbsd-generic.gz or netbsd-generic3x.gz as appropriate.) Please note that these kernels are simply gzipped and are not tar archives.

Note:
Each directory in the sun3 binary distribution also has its own checksum files, just as the source distribution does.

NetBSD/sun3 System Requirements and Supported Devices

NetBSD/sun3 3.0.3 runs on most Sun3 machines, including:

3/50 3/60 3/110
3/75 3/150 3/160
3/260 3/280 3/E
3/80 3/470

Note that NetBSD/sun3 now includes support for `Sun3X' machines, which used to be supported with a separate NetBSD/sun3x distribution.

The minimal configuration requires 4 MB of RAM and about 80 MB of disk space. To install the entire system requires much more disk space (approx. 100 MB additional space is necessary for full sources). To run X or compile the system, more RAM is recommended. Good performance requires 8 MB of RAM, or 16 MB when running the X Window System.

Here is a table of recommended HD partition sizes for a full install:

Partition Suggested + X Needed + X
/ (root) 20 MB 20 MB 15 MB 15 MB
/usr 175 MB 205 MB 75 MB 105 MB
/var 20 MB 20 MB 5 MB 5 MB
swap 2*RAM ...

Anything else is up to you!

As you may note, the recommended size of /usr is 100 MB greater than needed. This is to leave room for a kernel source and compile tree as you will probably want to compile your own kernel. (GENERIC is large and bulky to accommodate all people).

Note that the sun3 installation procedure uses a miniroot image which is placed into the swap area of the disk. The swap partition must be at least as large as the miniroot image (10 MB).

Supported hardware

If it's not on this list, there is no support for it in this release.

Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media

Installation is supported from several media types, including:

Note:
Installing on a `bare' machine requires some bootable device; either a tape drive or Sun-compatible NFS server.

The procedure for transferring the distribution sets onto installation media depends on the type of media. Instructions for each type of media are given below.

In order to create installation media, you will need all the files in the directory

       .../NetBSD-3.0.3/sun3/

Creating boot/install tapes
Installing from tape is the simplest method of all. This method uses two tapes; one called the boot tape, and another called the install tape.

The boot tape is created as follows:


       # cd .../NetBSD-3.0.3/sun3/installation/tapeimage
       # sh MakeBootTape /dev/nrst0

The install tape is created as follows:


       # cd .../NetBSD-3.0.3/sun3/installation/tapeimage
       # sh MakeInstallTape /dev/nrst0

If the tapes do not work as expected, you may need to explicitly set the EOF mark at the end of each tape segment. It may also be necessary to use the conv=osync argument to dd(1). Note that this argument is incompatible with the bs= argument. Consult the tape-related manual pages on the system where the tapes are created for more details.

Boot/Install from NFS server
If your machine has a disk and network connection, but no tape drive, it may be convenient for you to install NetBSD over the network. This involves temporarily booting your machine over NFS, just long enough so you can initialize its disk. This method requires that you have access to an NFS server on your network so you can configure it to support diskless boot for your machine. Configuring the NFS server is normally a task for a system administrator, and is not trivial.

If you are using a NetBSD system as the boot-server, have a look at the diskless(8) manual page for guidelines on how to proceed with this. If the server runs another operating system, consult the documentation that came with it (i.e. add_client(8) on SunOS).

When instructed to boot over the network, your sun3 expects to be able to download a second stage bootstrap program via TFTP after it has acquired its IP address through RARP. It will attempt to download a file using a name derived from the machine's recently acquired IP address, and in the case of sun3x machines, an extension which corresponds to the machine architecture. (It may be handy to have a hexadecimal calculator for this next step.) The filename is created by converting the machine's assigned IP address into hexadecimal, most-significant octet first, using uppercase characters for the non-decimal (A-F) digits. sun3x machines use a filename suffix of .SUN3X.

For example, a sun3 which has been assigned IP address 130.115.144.11 will make an TFTP request for 8273900B, and a sun3x will try 8273900B.SUN3X. Normally, this file is a symbolic link to the NetBSD/sun3 netboot program, which should be located in a place where the TFTP daemon can find it. (Remember, many TFTP daemons run in a chroot'ed environment.) The netboot program may be found in the install directory of this distribution.

The netboot program will query a bootparamd server to find the NFS server address and path name for its root, and then load a kernel from that location. The server should have a copy of the netbsd-rd kernel in the root area for your client (no other files are needed in the client root) and /etc/bootparams on the server should have an entry for your client and its root directory. The client will need access to the miniroot image, which can be provided using NFS or remote shell.

If you will be installing NetBSD on several clients, it may be useful to know that you can use a single NFS root for all the clients as long as they only use the netbsd-rd kernel. There will be no conflict between clients because the RAM-disk kernel will not use the NFS root. No swap file is needed; the RAM-disk kernel does not use that either.

Install/Upgrade from CD-ROM
This method requires that you boot from another device (i.e. tape or network, as described above). You may need to make a boot tape on another machine using the files provided on the CD-ROM. Once you have booted netbsd-rd (the RAM-disk kernel) and loaded the miniroot, you can load any of the distribution sets directly from the CD-ROM. The install program in the miniroot automates the work required to mount the CD-ROM and extract the files.
Install/Upgrade via FTP
This method requires that you boot from another device (i.e. tape or network, as described above). You may need to make a boot tape on another machine using the files in .../install (which you get via FTP). Once you have booted netbsd-rd (the RAM-disk kernel) and loaded the miniroot, you can load any of the distribution sets over the net using FTP. The install program in the miniroot automates the work required to configure the network interface and transfer the files.

The preparations for this installation/upgrade method are easy; all you make sure that there's some FTP site from which you can retrieve the NetBSD distribution when you're about to install or upgrade. You 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.

Preparing your System for NetBSD installation

Sun3 machines usually need little or no preparation before installing NetBSD, other than the usual, well advised precaution of backing up all data on any attached storage devices.

You will need to know the SCSI target ID of the drive on which you will install NetBSD.

Note:
SunOS on the sun3 uses confusing names for the SCSI devices: target 1 is sd2, target 2 is sd4, etc.

It might be a good time to run the diagnostics on your Sun3. First, attach a terminal to the ttya serial port, then set the ``Diag/Norm'' switch to the Diagnostic position, and power-on the machine. The Diag. switch setting forces console interaction to occur on ttya. Note that the 3/80 has a ``software'' diag switch you can set at the PROM monitor prompt. To turn on diag boot mode, do: q 70b 12 To return to normal boot mode, do: q 70b 6.

The console location (ttya, ttyb, or keyboard/display) is controlled by address 0x1F in the EEPROM, which you can examine and change in the PROM monitor by entering q1f followed by a numeric value (or just a `.' if you don't want to change it). Console values are:

00
Default graphics display

10
tty a (9600-N-8-1)

11
tty b (1200-N-8-1)

20
Color option board on P4

Installing the NetBSD System

Installing NetBSD is a relatively complex process, but if you have this document in hand it should not be too difficult.

There are several ways to install NetBSD onto your disk. If your machine has a tape drive the easiest way is Installing from tape (details below). If your machine is on a network with a suitable NFS server, then Installing from NFS is the next best method. Otherwise, if you have another Sun machine running SunOS you can initialize the disk on that machine and then move the disk. (Installing from SunOS is not recommended.)

Installing from tape
Create the NetBSD/sun3 3.0.3 boot tape as described in the section entitled Preparing a boot tape and boot the tape. At the PROM monitor prompt, use one of the commands:


       >b st()
       >b st(0,8,0)

The first example will use the tape on SCSI target 4, where the second will use SCSI target 5. The > is the monitor prompt.

After the tape loads, you should see many lines of configuration messages, and then the following `welcome' screen:

        Welcome to the NetBSD/sun3 RAMDISK root!
                                                                                     

This environment is designed to do only three things: 1: Partition your disk (use the command: edlabel /dev/rsd0c) 2: Copy a miniroot image into the swap partition (/dev/rsd0b) 3: Reboot (using the swap partition, i.e. /dev/sd?b).

Note that the sun3 firmware cannot boot from a partition located more than 1 GB from the beginning of the disk, so the swap partition should be completely below the 1 GB boundary.

Copying the miniroot can be done several ways, allowing the source of the miniroot image to be on any of these: boot tape, NFS server, TFTP server, rsh server

The easiest is loading from tape, which is done as follows: mt -f /dev/nrst0 rewind mt -f /dev/nrst0 fsf 2 dd bs=32k if=/dev/nrst0 of=/dev/rsd0b (For help with other methods, please see the install notes.)

To reboot using the swap partition, first use "halt", then at the PROM monitor prompt use a command like: b sd(,,1) -s

To view this message again, type: cat /.welcome

Copy the miniroot as described in the welcome message, and reboot from that just installed miniroot. See the section entitled Booting the miniroot for details.

Installing from NFS
Before you can install from NFS, you must have already configured your NFS server to support your machine as a diskless client. Instructions for configuring the server are found in the section entitled Getting the NetBSD System onto Useful Media above.

First, at the Sun PROM monitor prompt, enter a boot command using the network interface as the boot device. On desktop machines this is le, and ie on the others. Examples:


       >b le() -s
       >b ie() -s

After the boot program loads the RAMDISK kernel, you should see the welcome screen as shown in the Installing from tape section above. You must configure the network interface before you can use any network resources. For example the command:


       ssh> ifconfig le0 inet 192.233.20.198 up

will bring up the network interface with that address. The next step is to copy the miniroot from your server. This can be done using either NFS or remote shell. (In the examples that follow, the server has IP address 192.233.20.195.) You may then need to add a default route if the server is on a different subnet:


       ssh> route add default 192.233.20.255 1

You can look at the route table using:


       ssh> route show

Now mount the NFS file system containing the miniroot image:


       ssh> mount -r 192.233.20.195:/server/path /mnt

The procedure is simpler if you have space for an expanded (not compressed) copy of the miniroot image. In that case:


       ssh> dd if=/mnt/miniroot of=/dev/rsd0b bs=8k

Otherwise, you will need to use zcat to expand the miniroot image while copying. This is tricky because the ssh program (small shell) does not handle sh(1) pipeline syntax. Instead, you first run the reader in the background with its input set to /dev/pipe and then run the other program in the foreground with its output to /dev/pipe. The result looks like this:


       ssh> run -bg dd if=/dev/pipe of=/dev/rsd0b obs=8k
       ssh> run -o /dev/pipe zcat /mnt/install/miniroot.gz

To load the miniroot using rsh to the server, you would use a pair of commands similar to the above. Here is another example:


       ssh> run -b dd if=/dev/pipe of=/dev/rsd0b obs=8k
       ssh> run -o /dev/pipe rsh 192.233.20.195 zcat miniroot.gz

Installing from SunOS
To install NetBSD/sun3 onto a machine already running SunOS, you will need the miniroot image (miniroot.gz) and some means to decompress it.

First, boot SunOS and place the miniroot file onto the hard drive. If you do not have gzip for SunOS, you will need to decompress the image elsewhere before you can use it.

Next, bring SunOS down to single user mode to insure that nothing will be using the swap space on your drive. To be extra safe, reboot the machine into single-user mode rather than using the shutdown command.

Now copy the miniroot image onto your swap device (here /dev/rsd0b) with the command


       gzip -dc miniroot.gz | dd of=/dev/rsd0b obs=32k

or if you have already decompressed the miniroot


       dd if=miniroot.gz of=/dev/rsd0b obs=32k

Finally, reboot the machine and instruct the ROM to boot from the swap device as described in the next section.

Booting the Miniroot
If the miniroot was installed on partition `b' of the disk with SCSI target ID=0 then the PROM boot command would be:


       >b sd(0,0,1) -s

With SCSI target ID=2, the PROM is:


       >b sd(0,10,1) -s

The numbers in parentheses above are:

  1. controller (usually zero)
  2. unit number (SCSI-ID * 8, in hexadecimal)
  3. partition number
Miniroot install program
The miniroot's install program is very simple to use. It will guide you through the entire process, and is well automated. Additional improvements are planned for future releases.

The miniroot's install program will:

First-time installation on a system through a method other than the installation program is possible, but strongly discouraged.

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_de0="inet 123.45.67.89 netmask 255.255.255.0"

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


           ifconfig_de0="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, /etc/nsswitch.conf, and /etc/wscons.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

It is possible to easily upgrade your existing NetBSD/sun3 system using the upgrade program in the miniroot. If you wish to upgrade your system by this method, simply select the upgrade option once the miniroot has booted. The upgrade program with then guide you through the procedure. The upgrade program will:

Using the miniroot's upgrade program is the preferred method of upgrading your system.

However, it is possible to upgrade your system manually. To do this, follow the following procedure:

Note:
You should not extract the etc set if upgrading. Instead, you should extract that set into another area and carefully merge the changes by hand.

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: