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      1 Installation is supported from several media types, including:
      2 
      3 	FTP
      4 	Remote NFS partition
      5 	CD-ROM
      6 
      7 No matter which installation medium you choose, you'll need to have
      8 either a 1.44 MB floppy disk (if your Alpha has a floppy drive to
      9 boot from) or you'll have to set up an NFS server to boot from as
     10 described later in this document.
     11 
     12 If you are using a UN*X-like system to write the floppy images to
     13 disks, 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
     15 read the dd(1) manual page or ask your system administrator to
     16 determine the correct set of arguments to use; it will be slightly
     17 different from system to system, and a comprehensive list of the
     18 possibilities is beyond the scope of this document.
     19 
     20 If you are using DOS to write the floppy image to disk, you should
     21 use the "rawrite" utility, provided in the "i386/utilities" directory
     22 of the NetBSD distribution.  It will write the file system image (.fs
     23 file) to disks.
     24 
     25 Note that, when installing or upgrading, the floppy can be
     26 write-protected if you wish. These systems mount ramdisks as their
     27 root file systems once booted, and will not need to write to the
     28 floppy itself at any time -- indeed, once booted, the floppy may be
     29 removed from the disk drive.
     30 
     31 Obviously, the steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets
     32 for installation depend on which installation medium you choose.
     33 The steps for the various media are outlined below.
     34 
     35 To 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 
     58 To install NetBSD by using FTP to get the installation
     59 sets, 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 
     76 If you are upgrading NetBSD, you also have the option of installing
     77 NetBSD by putting the new distribution sets somewhere in your existing
     78 file system, and using them from there.  To do that, you must do the
     79 following:
     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