xfer revision 1.11.2.2 1 Installation is supported from several media types, including:
2
3 FTP
4 Remote NFS partition
5 DOS floppies
6
7 No matter which installation medium you choose, you'll need to have a
8 floppy disk (either 1.2M or 1.44M will work). You'll put the boot
9 floppy image ("boot.fs" for 1.44M floppies, "boot-small.fs" for 1.2M
10 floppies) onto this disk, which contains software to install or
11 upgrade your NetBSD system.
12
13 [Note: previous versions of NetBSD used several floppy images,
14 including several kernel/boot floppies depending on hardware
15 configuration, an install floppy, and an upgrade floppy. NetBSD _VER
16 only requires a single floppy for all tasks.]
17
18 If you are using a UN*X-like system to write the floppy images to
19 disks, you should use the "dd" command to copy the file system image
20 (.fs file) directly to the raw floppy disk. It is suggested that you
21 read the dd(1) manual page or ask your system administrator to
22 determine the correct set of arguments to use; it will be slightly
23 different from system to system, and a comprehensive list of the
24 possibilities is beyond the scope of this document.
25
26 If you are using DOS to write the floppy image to disk, you should
27 use the "rawrite" utility, provided in the "i386/utilities" directory
28 of the NetBSD distribution. It will write the file system image (.fs
29 file) to disks.
30
31 Note that, when installing or upgrading, the floppy can be
32 write-protected if you wish. These systems mount ramdisks as their
33 root file systems once booted, and will not need to write to the
34 floppy itself at any time -- indeed, once booted, the floppy may be
35 removed from the disk drive.
36
37 Obviously, the steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets for
38 installation or upgrade depend on which installation medium you
39 choose. The steps for the various media are outlined below.
40
41 To install or upgrade NetBSD using DOS floppies, you need to do the
42 following:
43
44 Count the number of "set_name.xx" files that make up the
45 distribution sets you want to install or upgrade. You will
46 need one fifth that number of 1.2M floppies, or one sixth that
47 number of 1.44M floppies. You should only use one size of
48 floppy for the install or upgrade procedure; you can't use
49 some 1.2M floppies and some 1.44M floppies.
50
51 Format all of the floppies with DOS. DO NOT make any of them
52 bootable DOS floppies, i.e. don't use "format/s" to format
53 them. (If the floppies are bootable, then the DOS system
54 files that make them bootable will take up some space, and you
55 won't be able to fit as many distribution set parts per disk.)
56 If you're using floppies that are formatted for DOS by their
57 manufacturers, they probably aren't bootable, and you can use
58 them out of the box.
59
60 Place all of the "set_name.xx" files on the DOS disks, five
61 per disk if you're using 1.2M disks, six per disk if you're
62 using 1.44M disks. How you do this is up to you; there are
63 many possibilities. You could, for instance, use a DOS
64 terminal program to download them on to the floppies, or use
65 a UN*X-like system capable of reading and writing DOS file
66 systems (either with "mtools" or a real DOS file system)
67 to place them on the disk.
68
69 Once you have the files on DOS disks, you can start the
70 actual installation or upgrade process.
71
72 To install or upgrade NetBSD using NFS, you must do the following:
73
74 Place the NetBSD distribution sets you wish to install into a
75 directory on an NFS server, and make that directory mountable
76 by the machine on which you are installing or upgrading NetBSD.
77 This will probably require modifying the /etc/exports file on
78 of the NFS server and resetting its mount daemon (mountd).
79 (Both of these actions will probably require superuser
80 privileges on the server.)
81
82 You need to know the the numeric IP address of the NFS server,
83 and, if the server is not on a network directly connected to
84 the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD,
85 you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest
86 to the NetBSD machine. Finally, you need to know the numeric
87 IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. The install
88 program will ask you to provide this information to be able
89 to access the sets.
90
91 Once the NFS server is set up properly and you have the
92 information mentioned above, you can start the actual
93 installation or upgrade process.
94
95 To install or upgrade NetBSD by using FTP to get the installation
96 sets, you must do the following:
97
98 The preparations for this installation/upgrade method are
99 easy; all you make sure that there's some FTP site from which
100 you can retrieve the NetBSD distribution when you're about to
101 install or upgrade. You need to know the numeric IP address
102 of that site, and, if it's not on a network directly connected
103 to the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD,
104 you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest
105 to the NetBSD machine. Finally, you need to know the numeric
106 IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. The install program
107 will ask you to provide this information to be able to access
108 the sets via ftp.
109
110 Once you have this information, you can proceed to the actual
111 installation or upgrade.
112
113 If you are upgrading NetBSD, you also have the option of installing
114 NetBSD by putting the new distribution sets somewhere in your existing
115 file system, and using them from there. To do that, you must do the
116 following:
117
118 Place the distribution sets you wish to upgrade somewhere in
119 your current file system tree. Please note that the /dev on
120 the floppy used for upgrades only knows about wd0, wd1, sd0,
121 sd1 and sd2. If you have more than two IDE drives or more than
122 three SCSI drives, you should take care not to place the sets
123 on the high numbered drives.
124
125 At a bare minimum, you must upgrade the "base" and "kern"
126 binary distribution, and so must put the "base" and
127 "kern" sets somewhere in your file system. If you wish,
128 you can do the other sets, as well, but you should NOT upgrade
129 the "etc" distribution; the "etc" distribution contains system
130 configuration files that you should review and update by hand.
131
132 Once you have done this, you can proceed to the next step in
133 the upgrade process, actually upgrading your system.
134