xref: /src/distrib/notes/pmax/prep

Before you start you should familiarize yourself with the boot PROM
of your machine.  The older Decstation 2100 and 3100 cannot select
a kernel from the command line. You need to set the bootpath
environment variable to point to the disk and kernel you intend to boot.

You should also examine the guide on the NetBSD/pmax web site, which
has more complete and more up-to-date instructions than are given in
the install document.

	NOTE that the instructions on old versions of the web site
	are incorrect. The installation miniroot image for both NetBSD 1.1
	and 1.2 include the 8Kbytes reserved for bootblocks and disklabel.
	The dd commands to write the miniroot to a freshly-labeleld
	disk should have an 'skip=16' added to them, if the 'skip=16'
	option is already present.


If you're installing NetBSD/pmax for the first time it's a very good idea
to look at the partition sizes of disk you intend installing NetBSD on.
Changing the size of partitions after you've installed is difficult.
If you do not have a spare bootable disk, it may be simpler to  re-install
NetBSD again from scratch.


Asumming a classic partition scheme with root (`/') and /usr filesystems,
a comfortable size for the NetBSD root filesystem partition is about 20MB;
a good initial size for the swap partition is twice the amount of physical
memory in your machine (though, unlike Ultrix, there are no restrictions on
the size of the swap partition that would render part of your memory
unusable). A full binary installation, without X11 or other additional
software, takes about 130MB in `/usr'.  This will be substantially reduced in
the next release with support fo dynamically-linked shared libraries.