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1Installation is supported from several media types, including:
2
3	FTP
4	Remote NFS partition
5	CD-ROM
6
7No matter which installation medium you choose, you'll need to have
8either a 1.44 MB floppy disk (if your Alpha has a floppy drive to
9boot from) or you'll have to set up an NFS server to boot from as
10described later in this document.
11
12If you are using a UN*X-like system to write the floppy images to
13disks, you should use the "dd" command to copy the file system image
14(.fs file) directly to the raw floppy disk.  It is suggested that you
15read the dd(1) manual page or ask your system administrator to
16determine the correct set of arguments to use; it will be slightly
17different from system to system, and a comprehensive list of the
18possibilities is beyond the scope of this document.
19
20If you are using DOS to write the floppy image to disk, you should
21use the "rawrite" utility, provided in the "i386/utilities" directory
22of the NetBSD distribution.  It will write the file system image (.fs
23file) to disks.
24
25Note that, when installing or upgrading, the floppy can be
26write-protected if you wish. These systems mount ramdisks as their
27root file systems once booted, and will not need to write to the
28floppy itself at any time -- indeed, once booted, the floppy may be
29removed from the disk drive.
30
31Obviously, the steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets
32for installation depend on which installation medium you choose.
33The steps for the various media are outlined below.
34
35To install NetBSD using NFS, you must do the following:
36
37	Place the NetBSD distribution sets you wish to install into a
38	directory on an NFS server, and make that directory mountable
39	by the machine on which you are installing or upgrading NetBSD.
40	This will probably require modifying the /etc/exports file on
41	of the NFS server and resetting its mount daemon (mountd).
42	(Both of these actions will probably require superuser
43	privileges on the server.)
44
45	You need to know the the numeric IP address of the NFS server,
46	and, if the server is not on a network directly connected to
47	the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD,
48	you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest
49	to the NetBSD machine.  Finally, you need to know the numeric
50	IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. The install
51	program will ask you to provide this information to be able
52	to access the sets.
53
54	Once the NFS server is set up properly and you have the
55	information mentioned above, you can start the actual
56	installation process.
57
58To install NetBSD by using FTP to get the installation
59sets, you must do the following:
60
61	The preparations for this installation method are easy;
62	all you make sure that there's some FTP site from which
63	you can retrieve the NetBSD distribution when you're about
64	to install. You need to know the numeric IP address of that
65	site, and, if it's not on a network directly connected to
66	the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD,
67	you need to know the numeric IP address of the router
68	closest to the NetBSD machine.  Finally, you need to know
69	the numeric IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. The
70	install program will ask you to provide this information
71	to be able to access the sets via ftp.
72
73	Once you have this information, you can proceed to the actual
74	installation.
75
76If you are upgrading NetBSD, you also have the option of installing
77NetBSD by putting the new distribution sets somewhere in your existing
78file system, and using them from there.  To do that, you must do the
79following:
80
81        Place the distribution sets you wish to upgrade somewhere in
82        your current file system tree. Please note that the /dev on
83        the floppy used for upgrades only knows about wd0, wd1, sd0,
84        sd1 and sd2. If you have more than two IDE drives or more than
85        three SCSI drives, you should take care not to place the sets
86        on the high numbered drives.
87
88        At a bare minimum, you must upgrade the "base" and "kern"
89        binary distribution, and so must put the "base" and
90        "kern" sets somewhere in your file system.  If you wish,
91        you can do the other sets, as well, but you should NOT upgrade
92        the "etc" distribution; the "etc" distribution contains system
93        configuration files that you should review and update by hand.
94
95	Once you have done this, you can proceed to the next step in
96	the upgrade process, actually upgrading your system.
97