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xfer revision 1.4 
      1 	$NetBSD: xfer,v 1.4 1998/07/05 13:59:25 ross Exp $	
      2 
      3 Installation is supported from several media types, including:
      4 
      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.
     13 
     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
     16 image ("floppy-144" file) directly to the raw floppy disk.  It is
     17 suggested that you read the dd(1) manual page or ask your system
     18 administrator to determine the correct set of arguments to use; it
     19 will be slightly different from system to system, and a comprehensive
     20 list of the possibilities is beyond the scope of this document. The
     21 command will look something like "dd if=floppy-144 bs=18k of=/dev/rfd0a".
     22 
     23 If you are using DOS to create the boot floppy, you should use the
     24 "rawrite" utility provided in the "i386/utilities" directory of
     25 the NetBSD distribution to write the file system image ("floppy-144"
     26 file) to a floppy.
     27 
     28 Note that, when installing or upgrading, the floppy can be
     29 write-protected if you wish. These systems mount ramdisks as their
     30 root file systems once booted, and will not need to write to the
     31 floppy itself at any time -- indeed, once booted, the floppy may be
     32 removed from the disk drive.
     33 
     34 Obviously, the steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets
     35 for installation depend on which installation medium you choose.
     36 The steps for the various media are outlined below.
     37 
     38 To install NetBSD using NFS to get the installation sets, you must
     39 do the following:
     40 
     41         Place the NetBSD distribution sets you wish to install into a
     42         directory on an NFS server, and make that directory mountable
     43         by the machine on which you are installing or upgrading NetBSD.
     44         This will probably require modifying the /etc/exports file on
     45         of the NFS server and resetting its mount daemon (mountd).
     46         (Both of these actions will probably require superuser
     47         privileges on the server.)
     48 
     49         You need to know the the numeric IP address of the NFS server,
     50         and, if the server is not on a network directly connected to
     51         the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD,
     52         you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest
     53         to the NetBSD machine.  Finally, you need to know the numeric
     54         IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. The install
     55         program will ask you to provide this information to be able
     56         to access the sets.
     57 
     58         Once the NFS server is set up properly and you have the
     59         information mentioned above, you can start the actual
     60         installation process.
     61 
     62 To install NetBSD by using FTP to get the installation sets, you
     63 must do the following:
     64 
     65         The preparations for this installation method are easy;
     66         all you make sure that there's some FTP site from which
     67         you can retrieve the NetBSD distribution when you're about
     68         to install. You need to know the numeric IP address of that
     69         site, and, if it's not on a network directly connected to
     70         the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD,
     71         you need to know the numeric IP address of the router
     72         closest to the NetBSD machine.  Finally, you need to know
     73         the numeric IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. The
     74         install program will ask you to provide this information
     75         to be able to access the sets via ftp.
     76 
     77         Once you have this information, you can proceed to the actual
     78         installation.
     79 
     80 To install NetBSD by using a CD-ROM to get the installation sets,
     81 you must do the following:
     82 
     83         Have a CD-ROM with the installation sets on it, and a CD-ROM
     84         drive on your machine.
     85 
     86 If you are upgrading NetBSD, you also have the option of installing
     87 NetBSD by putting the new distribution sets somewhere in your existing
     88 file system, and using them from there.  To do that, you must do the
     89 following:
     90 
     91         Place the distribution sets you wish to upgrade somewhere in
     92         your current file system tree. Please note that the /dev on
     93         the floppy used for upgrades only knows about wd0, wd1, sd0,
     94         sd1 and sd2. If you have more than two IDE drives or more than
     95         three SCSI drives, you should take care not to place the sets
     96         on the high numbered drives.
     97 
     98         At a bare minimum, you must upgrade the "base" and "kern"
     99         binary distribution, and so must put the "base" and
    100         "kern" sets somewhere in your file system.  If you wish,
    101         you can do the other sets, as well, but you should NOT upgrade
    102         the "etc" distribution; the "etc" distribution contains system
    103         configuration files that you should review and update by hand.
    104 
    105         Once you have done this, you can proceed to the next step in
    106         the upgrade process, actually upgrading your system.
    107