August 22, 2004 INSTALL 8 NetBSD

NAME

INSTALL - Installation procedure for NetBSD/sparc.

CONTENTS

                                                              

About this Document............................................2 Quick install notes for the impatient..........................2 What is NetBSD?................................................3 Changes Between The NetBSD 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 updates.............3 Kernel......................................................4 Networking..................................................4 System administration and user tools........................4 sparc specific..............................................4 Changes Between The NetBSD 2.0 release and 2.0.1 update........4 Kernel......................................................5 Networking..................................................5 System administration and user tools........................5 sparc specific..............................................5 Changes Between The NetBSD 1.6 and 2.0 Releases................5 Kernel......................................................5 Networking..................................................6 File system.................................................6 Security....................................................6 System administration and user tools........................7 Miscellaneous...............................................7 sparc specific..............................................7 Important notes about NetBSD 2.0.2.............................8 The Future of NetBSD...........................................8 Sources of NetBSD..............................................9 NetBSD 2.0.2 Release Contents..................................9 NetBSD/sparc subdirectory structure........................10 Binary distribution sets...................................11 NetBSD/sparc System Requirements and Supported Devices........13 Supported machines.........................................13 Machines not supported by NetBSD/sparc.....................14 Supported devices..........................................14 Unsupported devices........................................17 Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media..................17 Preparing your System for NetBSD installation.................20 Configuring your PROM......................................20 Determining how to access your SCSI disk from the..........22 Determining how to boot from an SBUS card..................23 Deciding on partition sizes................................24 Configuration of network interfaces........................24 Installing the NetBSD System..................................25 Installing NetBSD by placing a bootable file system on.....25 Installing NetBSD by using a bootable CD-ROM...............26 Installing NetBSD by using the bootable floppies...........26 Installing NetBSD by using a netboot setup.................27 Installing NetBSD by using a bootable tape.................33 Running the installation scripts...........................33 Post installation steps.......................................34 Upgrading a previously-installed NetBSD System................37 Compatibility Issues With Previous NetBSD Releases............38 Issues affecting an upgrade from NetBSD 1.6................38 Using online NetBSD documentation.............................39 Administrivia.................................................40 Thanks go to..................................................40 We are........................................................43 Legal Mumbo-Jumbo.............................................49 The End.......................................................55

DESCRIPTION

About this Document

This document describes the installation procedure for NetBSD2.0.2 on the sparc 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.

Quick install notes for the impatient

This section contains some brief notes describing what you need to install NetBSD2.0.2 on a machine of the sparc architecture.

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 NetBSD2.0.2 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 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 updates

The NetBSD2.0.2 release is the second security/critical update of the NetBSD 2.0 release branch. This represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical in nature for stability or security reasons. All of these fixes will also appear on future NetBSD releases (e.g. NetBSD2.1 , etc) from the NetBSD 2.0 release branch as well.

Specific updates are as follows:

Kernel
Networking
System administration and user tools
sparc specific

Changes Between The NetBSD 2.0 release and 2.0.1 update

The NetBSD2.0.1 release is the first security/critical update of the NetBSD 2.0 release branch. This represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical in nature for stability or security reasons. All of these fixes will also appear on future NetBSD releases (e.g. NetBSD2.1 , etc) from the NetBSD 2.0 release branch as well.

Specific updates are as follows:

Kernel
Networking
System administration and user tools
sparc specific

Changes Between The NetBSD 1.6 and 2.0 Releases

The NetBSD 2.0 release provides numerous significant functional enhancements, including support for many new devices, integration of hundreds of bug fixes, new and updated kernel subsystems, and many user-land enhancements. The result of these improvements is a stable operating system fit for production use that rivals most commercially available systems.

It is impossible to completely summarize over two years of development that went into the NetBSD2.0.2 release. Some highlights include:

Kernel
Networking
File system
Security
System administration and user tools
Miscellaneous

Kernel interfaces have continued to be refined, and more subsystems and device drivers are shared among the different ports. You can look for this trend to continue.

sparc specific

NetBSD2.0.2 is the eigth major release for the sparc.

Some (but not all!) notable sparc-specific improvements include:

NetBSD2.0.2 on sparc is, as usual, also fully backward compatible with old NetBSD/sparc binaries, so you don't need to recompile all your local programs provided you set the appropriate binary compatibility options in your kernel configuration.

Important notes about NetBSD 2.0.2

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/Sites/net.html.

NetBSD 2.0.2 Release Contents

The root directory of the NetBSD2.0.2 release is organized as follows:

.../NetBSD-2.0.2/

CHANGES
Changes since earlier NetBSD releases.

LAST_MINUTE
Last minute changes.

MIRRORS
A list of sites that mirror the NetBSD2.0.2 distribution.

README.files
README describing the distribution's contents.

TODO
The NetBSD 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 NetBSD2.0.2 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 NetBSD2.0.2 sources which are not in gnusrc, sharesrc, or syssrc.
37 MB gzipped, 176 MB uncompressed

syssrc
This set contains the sources to the NetBSD2.0.2 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/sparc subdirectory structure
The sparc-specific portion of the NetBSD2.0.2 release is found in the sparc subdirectory of the distribution: .../NetBSD-2.0.2/sparc/. 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.
netbsd-GENERIC.MP.gz
A gzipped NetBSD kernel containing code for everything supported in this release. This kernel also supports SMP on systems with more than one CPU.
netbsd-GENERIC_SCSI3.gz
A kernel with SCSI ID 3 explicitly mapped to sd0.
netbsd-KRUPS.gz
A kernel for JavaStation-NC (Krups) machines.
netbsd-MRCOFFEE.gz
A kernel for JavaStation-1 (Mr. Coffee) machines using Open Boot Prom firmware.
netbsd-MRCOFFEE_OFW.gz
A kernel for JavaStation-1 (Mr. Coffee) machines using OpenFirmware.
netbsd-GENERIC_SUN4U.gz
A kernel which supports sparc64 hardware in 32-bit mode only. See the sparc64 INSTALL notes for help installing this kernel on your sparc64 hardware.
sets/
sparc binary distribution sets; see below.
installation/
bootfs/
Netbootable RAM disk kernel and the file system in the RAM disk; see below.
floppy/
sparc boot and installation floppies; see below.
miniroot/
sparc miniroot file system image; see below.
netboot/
Netboot bootloader and root filesystem with install tools; see below.
tape/
sparc boot and installation tapes; see below.
Binary distribution sets
The NetBSD sparc binary distribution sets contain the binaries which comprise the NetBSD2.0.2 release for the sparc. The binary distribution sets can be found in the sparc/binary/sets subdirectory of the NetBSD2.0.2 distribution tree, and are as follows:

base
The NetBSD2.0.2 sparc 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.
18 MB gzipped, 51 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, 77 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, 8 MB uncompressed

kern-GENERIC
This set contains a NetBSD/sparc 2.0.2 GENERIC kernel named /netbsd. You must install this distribution set.
2 MB gzipped, 4 MB uncompressed

kern-GENERIC.MP
This set contains a NetBSD/sparc 2.0.2 GENERIC.MP kernel, which will use multiple processors (if present), named /netbsd.
2 MB gzipped, 4 MB uncompressed

kern-GENERIC_SCSI3
This set contains a NetBSD/sparc 2.0.2 GENERIC_SCSI3 kernel, which will set SCSI ID 3 to sd0, named /netbsd.
2 MB gzipped, 4 MB uncompressed

kern-GENERIC_SUN4U
This set contains a NetBSD/sparc 2.0.2 GENERIC_SUN4U kernel, which supports only UltraSPARC systems in 32 bit mode, named /netbsd.
3 MB gzipped, 6 MB uncompressed

kern-KRUPS
This set contains a NetBSD/sparc 2.0.2 GENERIC-KRUPS kernel, which supports the JavaStation-NC, named /netbsd.
1 MB gzipped, 2 MB uncompressed

kern-MRCOFFEE
This set contains a NetBSD/sparc 2.0.2 MRCOFFE kernel, which which supports the OpenBOOT PROM 2 JavaStation-1, named /netbsd.
1 MB gzipped, 2 MB uncompressed

kern-MRCOFFEE_OFW
This set contains a NetBSD/sparc 2.0.2 MRCOFFE_OFW kernel, which which supports the OpenFirmware JavaStation-1, named /netbsd.
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, 18 MB uncompressed

xcomp
The extra libraries and include files needed to compile X source code.
12 MB gzipped, 42 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. This includes Xsun, Xsun24, XsunMono and Xvfb servers with man pages.
5 MB gzipped, 13 MB uncompressed

The sparc 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.

Note:
The distribution cannot be extracted using the SunOS tar program

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

NetBSD/sparc System Requirements and Supported Devices

The minimum configuration requires 4 MB of RAM and 60 MB of disk space. To install the entire system requires about 260 MB (not including swap). To install the X window system you need at least 295 MB (not including swap) and 8 MB RAM. NetBSD with 4 MB of RAM feels like Solaris with 4 MB of RAM -- slow. Note that until you have around 16 MB of RAM, getting more RAM is more important than getting a faster CPU.

Supported machines
Machines not supported by NetBSD/sparc
Supported devices