xfer revision 1.3
1 $NetBSD: xfer,v 1.3 1998/01/09 18:45:40 perry Exp $ 2 3Installation is supported from several media types, including: 4 5 FTP 6 Remote NFS partition 7 CD-ROM 8 9No matter which installation medium you choose, you'll need to have 10either a 1.44 MB floppy disk (if your Alpha has a floppy drive to 11boot from) or you'll have to set up a server with BOOTP, TFTP and 12NFS to boot from as described later in this document. 13 14If you are using a UN*X-like system to write the floppy images to 15disks, you should use the "dd" command to copy the file system image 16(.fs file) directly to the raw floppy disk. It is suggested that you 17read the dd(1) manual page or ask your system administrator to 18determine the correct set of arguments to use; it will be slightly 19different from system to system, and a comprehensive list of the 20possibilities is beyond the scope of this document. 21 22If you are using DOS to write the floppy image to disk, you should 23use the "rawrite" utility, provided in the "i386/utilities" directory 24of the NetBSD distribution. It will write the file system image (.fs 25file) to disks. 26 27Note that, when installing or upgrading, the floppy can be 28write-protected if you wish. These systems mount ramdisks as their 29root file systems once booted, and will not need to write to the 30floppy itself at any time -- indeed, once booted, the floppy may be 31removed from the disk drive. 32 33Obviously, the steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets 34for installation depend on which installation medium you choose. 35The steps for the various media are outlined below. 36 37To install NetBSD using NFS to get the installation sets, you must 38do the following: 39 40 Place the NetBSD distribution sets you wish to install into a 41 directory on an NFS server, and make that directory mountable 42 by the machine on which you are installing or upgrading NetBSD. 43 This will probably require modifying the /etc/exports file on 44 of the NFS server and resetting its mount daemon (mountd). 45 (Both of these actions will probably require superuser 46 privileges on the server.) 47 48 You need to know the the numeric IP address of the NFS server, 49 and, if the server is not on a network directly connected to 50 the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD, 51 you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest 52 to the NetBSD machine. Finally, you need to know the numeric 53 IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. The install 54 program will ask you to provide this information to be able 55 to access the sets. 56 57 Once the NFS server is set up properly and you have the 58 information mentioned above, you can start the actual 59 installation process. 60 61To install NetBSD by using FTP to get the installation sets, you 62must do the following: 63 64 The preparations for this installation method are easy; 65 all you make sure that there's some FTP site from which 66 you can retrieve the NetBSD distribution when you're about 67 to install. You need to know the numeric IP address of that 68 site, and, if it's not on a network directly connected to 69 the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD, 70 you need to know the numeric IP address of the router 71 closest to the NetBSD machine. Finally, you need to know 72 the numeric IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. The 73 install program will ask you to provide this information 74 to be able to access the sets via ftp. 75 76 Once you have this information, you can proceed to the actual 77 installation. 78 79To install NetBSD by using a CD-ROM to get the installation sets, 80you must do the following: 81 82 Have a CD-ROM with the installation sets on it, and a CD-ROM 83 drive on your machine. 84 85If you are upgrading NetBSD, you also have the option of installing 86NetBSD by putting the new distribution sets somewhere in your existing 87file system, and using them from there. To do that, you must do the 88following: 89 90 Place the distribution sets you wish to upgrade somewhere in 91 your current file system tree. Please note that the /dev on 92 the floppy used for upgrades only knows about wd0, wd1, sd0, 93 sd1 and sd2. If you have more than two IDE drives or more than 94 three SCSI drives, you should take care not to place the sets 95 on the high numbered drives. 96 97 At a bare minimum, you must upgrade the "base" and "kern" 98 binary distribution, and so must put the "base" and 99 "kern" sets somewhere in your file system. If you wish, 100 you can do the other sets, as well, but you should NOT upgrade 101 the "etc" distribution; the "etc" distribution contains system 102 configuration files that you should review and update by hand. 103 104 Once you have done this, you can proceed to the next step in 105 the upgrade process, actually upgrading your system. 106