xfer revision 1.14
1 $NetBSD: xfer,v 1.14 1998/01/09 18:46:36 perry Exp $ 2 3Installation is supported from several media types, including: 4 5 FTP 6 Remote NFS partition 7 DOS floppies 8 9No matter which installation medium you choose, you'll need to have a 10floppy disk (either 1.2M or 1.44M will work). You'll put the boot 11floppy image ("boot.fs" for 1.44M floppies, "boot-small.fs" for 1.2M 12floppies) onto this disk, which contains software to install or 13upgrade your NetBSD system. 14 15[Note: previous versions of NetBSD used several floppy images, 16including several kernel/boot floppies depending on hardware 17configuration, an install floppy, and an upgrade floppy. NetBSD _VER 18only requires a single floppy for all tasks.] 19 20If you are using a UN*X-like system to write the floppy images to 21disks, you should use the "dd" command to copy the file system image 22(.fs file) directly to the raw floppy disk. It is suggested that you 23read the dd(1) manual page or ask your system administrator to 24determine the correct set of arguments to use; it will be slightly 25different from system to system, and a comprehensive list of the 26possibilities is beyond the scope of this document. 27 28If you are using DOS to write the floppy image to disk, you should 29use the "rawrite" utility, provided in the "i386/utilities" directory 30of the NetBSD distribution. It will write the file system image (.fs 31file) to disks. 32 33Note that, when installing or upgrading, the floppy can be 34write-protected if you wish. These systems mount ramdisks as their 35root file systems once booted, and will not need to write to the 36floppy itself at any time -- indeed, once booted, the floppy may be 37removed from the disk drive. 38 39Obviously, the steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets for 40installation or upgrade depend on which installation medium you 41choose. The steps for the various media are outlined below. 42 43To install or upgrade NetBSD using DOS floppies, you need to do the 44following: 45 46 Count the number of "set_name.xx" files that make up the 47 distribution sets you want to install or upgrade. You will 48 need one fifth that number of 1.2M floppies, or one sixth that 49 number of 1.44M floppies. You should only use one size of 50 floppy for the install or upgrade procedure; you can't use 51 some 1.2M floppies and some 1.44M floppies. 52 53 Format all of the floppies with DOS. DO NOT make any of them 54 bootable DOS floppies, i.e. don't use "format/s" to format 55 them. (If the floppies are bootable, then the DOS system 56 files that make them bootable will take up some space, and you 57 won't be able to fit as many distribution set parts per disk.) 58 If you're using floppies that are formatted for DOS by their 59 manufacturers, they probably aren't bootable, and you can use 60 them out of the box. 61 62 Place all of the "set_name.xx" files on the DOS disks, five 63 per disk if you're using 1.2M disks, six per disk if you're 64 using 1.44M disks. How you do this is up to you; there are 65 many possibilities. You could, for instance, use a DOS 66 terminal program to download them on to the floppies, or use 67 a UN*X-like system capable of reading and writing DOS file 68 systems (either with "mtools" or a real DOS file system) 69 to place them on the disk. 70 71 Once you have the files on DOS disks, you can start the 72 actual installation or upgrade process. 73 74To install or upgrade NetBSD using NFS, you must do the following: 75 76 Place the NetBSD distribution sets you wish to install into a 77 directory on an NFS server, and make that directory mountable 78 by the machine on which you are installing or upgrading NetBSD. 79 This will probably require modifying the /etc/exports file on 80 of the NFS server and resetting its mount daemon (mountd). 81 (Both of these actions will probably require superuser 82 privileges on the server.) 83 84 You need to know the the numeric IP address of the NFS server, 85 and, if the server is not on a network directly connected to 86 the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD, 87 you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest 88 to the NetBSD machine. Finally, you need to know the numeric 89 IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. The install 90 program will ask you to provide this information to be able 91 to access the sets. 92 93 Once the NFS server is set up properly and you have the 94 information mentioned above, you can start the actual 95 installation or upgrade process. 96 97To install or upgrade NetBSD by using FTP to get the installation 98sets, you must do the following: 99 100 The preparations for this installation/upgrade method are 101 easy; all you make sure that there's some FTP site from which 102 you can retrieve the NetBSD distribution when you're about to 103 install or upgrade. You need to know the numeric IP address 104 of that site, and, if it's not on a network directly connected 105 to the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD, 106 you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest 107 to the NetBSD machine. Finally, you need to know the numeric 108 IP address of the NetBSD machine itself. The install program 109 will ask you to provide this information to be able to access 110 the sets via ftp. 111 112 Once you have this information, you can proceed to the actual 113 installation or upgrade. 114 115If you are upgrading NetBSD, you also have the option of installing 116NetBSD by putting the new distribution sets somewhere in your existing 117file system, and using them from there. To do that, you must do the 118following: 119 120 Place the distribution sets you wish to upgrade somewhere in 121 your current file system tree. Please note that the /dev on 122 the floppy used for upgrades only knows about wd0, wd1, sd0, 123 sd1 and sd2. If you have more than two IDE drives or more than 124 three SCSI drives, you should take care not to place the sets 125 on the high numbered drives. 126 127 At a bare minimum, you must upgrade the "base" and "kern" 128 binary distribution, and so must put the "base" and 129 "kern" sets somewhere in your file system. If you wish, 130 you can do the other sets, as well, but you should NOT upgrade 131 the "etc" distribution; the "etc" distribution contains system 132 configuration files that you should review and update by hand. 133 134 Once you have done this, you can proceed to the next step in 135 the upgrade process, actually upgrading your system. 136