xfer revision 1.3 1 $NetBSD: xfer,v 1.3 1998/01/09 18:45:40 perry Exp $
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3 Installation is supported from several media types, including:
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5 FTP
6 Remote NFS partition
7 CD-ROM
8
9 No matter which installation medium you choose, you'll need to have
10 either a 1.44 MB floppy disk (if your Alpha has a floppy drive to
11 boot from) or you'll have to set up a server with BOOTP, TFTP and
12 NFS to boot from as described later in this document.
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14 If you are using a UN*X-like system to write the floppy images to
15 disks, 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
17 read the dd(1) manual page or ask your system administrator to
18 determine the correct set of arguments to use; it will be slightly
19 different from system to system, and a comprehensive list of the
20 possibilities is beyond the scope of this document.
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22 If you are using DOS to write the floppy image to disk, you should
23 use the "rawrite" utility, provided in the "i386/utilities" directory
24 of the NetBSD distribution. It will write the file system image (.fs
25 file) to disks.
26
27 Note that, when installing or upgrading, the floppy can be
28 write-protected if you wish. These systems mount ramdisks as their
29 root file systems once booted, and will not need to write to the
30 floppy itself at any time -- indeed, once booted, the floppy may be
31 removed from the disk drive.
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33 Obviously, the steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets
34 for installation depend on which installation medium you choose.
35 The steps for the various media are outlined below.
36
37 To install NetBSD using NFS to get the installation sets, you must
38 do 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.)
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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.
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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
61 To install NetBSD by using FTP to get the installation sets, you
62 must 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.
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76 Once you have this information, you can proceed to the actual
77 installation.
78
79 To install NetBSD by using a CD-ROM to get the installation sets,
80 you 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
85 If you are upgrading NetBSD, you also have the option of installing
86 NetBSD by putting the new distribution sets somewhere in your existing
87 file system, and using them from there. To do that, you must do the
88 following:
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.
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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.
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104 Once you have done this, you can proceed to the next step in
105 the upgrade process, actually upgrading your system.
106